Datatype for a JPEG? 1

[sazebac]

What datatype should I use for a JPEG image? What I'm going for is something similar to Amazon where a person searches for a book and is given the book info plus a picture of the book. I suppose all the pictures of all the books would be stored in a database. If I'm on the wrong track let me know. Thanks.

 

[sleipnir214]

You can store JPEGs in your database -- you would use one of the BLOB types (

http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Column_types.html).

I strongly recommend, however, that you not store the JPEG in your database, but that you store the JPEG on your filesystem and store the filename in the database. If you are outputting to the web, I even more strongly recommend this.

If you store the JPEG data in your database, you must then write yourself the code for fetching the data, setting the correct content type, and streaming the data to the client.

If you store just the filename, then all you have to do is provide a reference to the filename. If you're using HTML as your output, it's just fetch the data and output a string like: <IMG src=[your fetched filename]>&quot;. Your web server will handle the streaming and the content-type for you.



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