How can I store and retrieve images from a MySQL database using PHP?

Question

How can I insert an image in MySQL and then retrieve it using PHP?

I have limited experience in either area, and I could use a little code to get me started in figuring this out.

Solution 1

First you create a MySQL table to store images, like for example:

create table testblob (
    image_id        tinyint(3)  not null default '0',
    image_type      varchar(25) not null default '',
    image           blob        not null,
    image_size      varchar(25) not null default '',
    image_ctgy      varchar(25) not null default '',
    image_name      varchar(50) not null default ''
);

Then you can write an image to the database like:

/***
 * All of the below MySQL_ commands can be easily
 * translated to MySQLi_ with the additions as commented
 ***/ 
$imgData = file_get_contents($filename);
$size = getimagesize($filename);
mysql_connect("localhost", "$username", "$password");
mysql_select_db ("$dbname");
// mysqli 
// $link = mysqli_connect("localhost", $username, $password,$dbname); 
$sql = sprintf("INSERT INTO testblob
    (image_type, image, image_size, image_name)
    VALUES
    ('%s', '%s', '%d', '%s')",
    /***
     * For all mysqli_ functions below, the syntax is:
     * mysqli_whartever($link, $functionContents); 
     ***/
    mysql_real_escape_string($size['mime']),
    mysql_real_escape_string($imgData),
    $size[3],
    mysql_real_escape_string($_FILES['userfile']['name'])
    );
mysql_query($sql);

You can display an image from the database in a web page with:

$link = mysql_connect("localhost", "username", "password");
mysql_select_db("testblob");
$sql = "SELECT image FROM testblob WHERE image_id=0";
$result = mysql_query("$sql");
header("Content-type: image/jpeg");
echo mysql_result($result, 0);
mysql_close($link);

Solution 2

Instead of storing images in database store them in a folder in your disk and store their location in your data base.

Solution 3

Beware that serving images from DB is usually much, much much slower than serving them from disk.

You'll be starting a PHP process, opening a DB connection, having the DB read image data from the same disk and RAM for cache as filesystem would, transferring it over few sockets and buffers and then pushing out via PHP, which by default makes it non-cacheable and adds overhead of chunked HTTP encoding.

OTOH modern web servers can serve images with just few optimized kernel calls (memory-mapped file and that memory area passed to TCP stack), so that they don't even copy memory around and there's almost no overhead.

That's a difference between being able to serve 20 or 2000 images in parallel on one machine.

So don't do it unless you absolutely need transactional integrity (and actually even that can be done with just image metadata in DB and filesystem cleanup routines) and know how to improve PHP's handling of HTTP to be suitable for images.

Solution 4

My opinion is, Instead of storing images directly to the database, It is recommended to store the image location in the database. As we compare both options, Storing images in the database is safe for security purpose. Disadvantage are

1. If database is corrupted, no way to retrieve.

2. Retrieving image files from db is slow when compare to other option.

On the other hand, storing image file location in db will have following advantages.

1. It is easy to retrieve.

2. If more than one images are stored, we can easily retrieve image information.

Solution 5

i also recommend thinking this thru and then choosing to store images in your file system rather than the DB .. see here: Storing Images in DB - Yea or Nay?

View more solutions

Comments

[Giles Roberts]

If your images are larger than 65K you'll want to change the type of the blob field. stackoverflow.com/questions/3503841/…

[Giles Roberts]

For a variety of images, I got encoding and escape sequence errors with the above code. I had to replace $imgData = file_get_contents($filename); with $fp = fopen($filepath, 'r'); $imgData = fread($fp, filesize($filepath)); $imgData = addslashes($imgData); fclose($fp); to get it to work consistently.

[Giles Roberts]

The link at the head of the answer is definitely worth looking at as it contains significantly more detail.

[Ry-]

Seems like this would fail spectacularly if the image data contained an apostrophe.

[Andomar]

@minitech: Or even the image name... added mysql_real_escape_string now.

[Md. Sahadat Hossain]

if image type is gif or another type except jpeg then what to do.

[krummens]

Very good code but mysql is outdated. can you update your answer to include mysqli?

[anonymous]

I downvoted because the best way of doing this is what @Ankid Sharma said: storing image in a server folder.

[J. Allan]

@KrLx_roller: Storing an image in a server folder may be better, but it's not what the OP asked. Hence, I believe this question to be "useful." +!

[ekerner]

Your making assumptions. Its very common now to have a web/browser based app which you want to function in offline mode, so you need some clever cache mgmt and/or images in the web based database (WebSQL, PouchDB, Couchbase, Mongo, etc).

[Robert Simpson]

This answer purports as a better solution; the OP wants to store the image in a db.

[DonP]

Subjective and nothing to do with the question about how to insert images into a database.

[Simas Joneliunas]

This does not provide an answer to the question. Once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post; instead, provide answers that don't require clarification from the asker. - From Review