images in MySQL

[poLka]

back with anotha....

Am trying to build a sort of online photo album and was wondering if when users upload a picture, does it physically get stored in the DB or does the DB just contain the URL to the file on the server? ps. I don't LIKE to sound dumb, just curios like George. Cheers!

[seanf]

You don't sound dumb at all. When you upload a file you need to decide what to do with it. As you posted, you can either store the file in the database or details of the file. I would recommended never storing images or other files in the database, as it is very inefficient. Just uploaded the file, move it to a directory using move_uploaded_file() and store the details in your database

Sean

[poLka]

thankya seanf! exactly what i'm looking for, much appreciated.

[seanf]

Your welcome

Sean

[pootergeist]

to add further -

some people like to name uploaded files the same as the client had them named - if you do that there is a chance of overwriting older files named the same (ie two people upload me.jpg and the older gets overwritten)

personally I find it best to use an auto_increment field in the database and name the file according to that - eg 1.jpg 2.jpg 3.jpg etc - you could pull the extension through using getimagesize()

[poLka]

sorry, i don't mean to be rude (i'm a newbie!!) but this problem could be alleviated if every user was associated a unique Id, in which a directory would be named after and all images they upload be stored in there?

[pootergeist]

yup - unless of course they uploaded two files from different folders on their PC that were named the same

[poLka]

coo, i'm gettin it now... cheers pootergeist

[Jeff Lange]

You could even go like this:

User uploads file: Get's unique ID, name file "1.jpg"
Store ID in Database, with the original filename as a column
When serving the file, you can use

header('Content-Disposition: inline; filename="' . $row['original_filename'] . '"'); 

[poLka]

i love how different everyone thinks, nice suggestion.