Can I store images in MySQL

Question

Possible Duplicates    Images in MySQL   Storing images in MySQL       I m trying to develop a website where users upload their images as part of registration  I want it that for each image  there should be a thumb created with PHP  which is not that difficult   I want to save the thumbs  since they are very small  in the database and I use MySQL   I don t want to save the thumbs as physical files on the drive   Does MySQL allow saving and retrieving image data and how do I go about it  If it doesn t support image data  is there any free database that does  I will be happy if a link can be provided  Thanks

User · Answer

You will need to store the image in the database as a BLOB.

you will want to create a column called PHOTO in your table and set it as a mediumblob.

Then you will want to get it from the form like so:

    $data = file_get_contents($_FILES['photo']['tmp_name']);

and then set the column to the value in $data.

Of course, this is bad practice and you would probably want to store the file on the system with a name that corresponds to the users account.

User · Answer

Yes  you can store images in the database  but it s not advisable in my opinion  and it s not general practice    A general practice is to store images in directories on the file system and store references to the images in the database  e g  path to the image the image name  etc   Or alternatively  you may even store images on a content delivery network  CDN  or numerous hosts across some great expanse of physical territory  and store references to access those resources in the database   Images can get quite large  greater than 1MB  And so storing images in a database can potentially put unnecessary load on your database and the network between your database and your web server if they re on different hosts    I ve worked at startups  mid-size companies and large technology companies with 400K  employees  In my 13 years of professional experience  I ve never seen anyone store images in a database  I say this to support the statement it is an uncommon practice

User · Answer

You can store images in MySQL as blobs  However  this is problematic for a couple of reasons    The images can be harder to manipulate  you must first retrieve them from the database before bulk operations can be performed  Except in very rare cases where the entire database is stored in RAM  MySQL databases are ultimately stored on disk  This means that your DB images are converted to blobs  inserted into a database  and then stored on disk  you can save a lot of overhead by simply storing them on disk    Instead  consider updating your table to add an image path field  For example   ALTER TABLE  your table  ADD COLUMN  image path  varchar 1024    Then store your images on disk  and update the table with the image path  When you need to use the images  retrieve them from disk using the path specified    An advantageous side-effect of this approach is that the images do not necessarily be stored on disk  you could just as easily store a URL instead of an image path  and retrieve images from any internet-connected location

User · Answer

You ll need to save as a blob  LONGBLOB datatype in mysql will work   Ex   CREATE TABLE  test   pic         idpic  INTEGER UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO INCREMENT       caption  VARCHAR 45  NOT NULL       img  LONGBLOB NOT NULL    PRIMARY KEY   idpic       As others have said  its a bad practice but it can be done  Not sure if this code would scale well  though

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