Reasons to store your images (binary files) in a database:

1. Storing in a database allows better security for your files and images.
2. Eliminates messy directory and file structures (this is especially true when users are allow to contribute files).
3. Files/Images can be stored directly linking to user or advertiser information.

You may want to reconsider storing your binary files in the database. Here are some reason you may not want to:

1. You can’t directly access your files using standard applications such as FTP.
2. If you database becomes corrupt, so do your files.
3. Migrating to a new database is made more difficult
4. Pulling images from a database and displaying them is slower than using file access.

After considering above reasons, you may continue to the first step of this tutorial.

Database Type and Connection

I assume that you already create a mySQL database named “binary”. We created two tables, one the primary ID (of the row/entry) and the binary BLOB. A BLOB is a binary large object that can hold a variable amount of data. The four BLOB types are TINYBLOB, BLOB, MEDIUMBLOB, and LONGBLOB. These differ only in the maximum length of the values they can hold. The four TEXT types are TINYTEXT, TEXT, MEDIUMTEXT, and LONGTEXT. These correspond to the four BLOB types and have the same maximum lengths and storage requirements.

You’ve now created your database and are ready to upload binary files to it. In this case, images. Next we will create a simple upload script.

Creating the HTML

Creating the user interface where you or your visitors will upload files is very simple. Using basic HTML and relying on the browser to do most of the heavy lifting you can easily create an upload form. Here is the one we will use:

<form enctype="multipart/form-data" action="insert.php" method="post" name="changer">

<input name="MAX_FILE_SIZE" value="102400" type="hidden">
<input name="image" accept="image/jpeg" type="file">

<input value="Submit" type="submit">

Copy this code into a file and save it as add.html

The code above allows the uses to browse for a file and select any image/jpeg file type. Once selected and the submit button is pressed the image contents are forwarded to PHP script, insert.php

Inserting the Image into MySQL

Create a new file named insert.php. If you change the name of this file you will also need to change the action=”" part in your HTML file above. Open the file in your favorite text editor or PHP IDE.

Write or copy/paste this code into your file:

The above code sets your connection variables, creates a connection to MySQL and selects your database (binary if you followed my instructions above). Next we need to read the form data and insert it into the database.

The PHP code above takes the user selected image, reads it with fopen and stores the data in a variable named $data. The binary data is then inserted into our database for retrieval at a later time.

Save the file above and access add.html via your browser. Select an image file and upload it.

I will post the next stage of this tutorial: “How to read binary data from database“

It is an excellent idea to consistenly and logically comment your htaccess files. Any line in an htaccess file that begins with the pound sign ( # ) tells the server to ignore it. Multiple lines require multiple pounds and use letters/numbers/dash/underscore only:

# this is a comment
# each line must have its own pound sign
# use only alphanumeric characters along with dashes - and underscores _

Enable Basic Rewriting [ ^ ]

Certain servers may not have “mod_rewrite” enabled by default. To ensure mod_rewrite (basic rewriting) is enabled throughout your site, add the following line once to your site’s root htaccess file:

# enable basic rewriting
RewriteEngine on

Enable Symbolic Links [ ^ ]

Enable symbolic links (symlinks) by adding the following directive to the target directory’s htaccess file. Note: for the FollowSymLinks directive to function, AllowOverride Options privileges must be enabled from within the server configuration file :

# enable symbolic links
Options +FollowSymLinks

Enable AllowOverride [ ^ ]

For directives that require AllowOverride in order to function, such as FollowSymLinks (see above paragraph), the following directive must be added to the server configuration file. For performance considerations, it is important to only enable AllowOverride in the specific directory or directories in which it is required. In the following code chunk, we are enabling the AllowOverride privs only in the specified directory (/www/replace/this/with/actual/directory). Refer to this code for AllowOverride sample:

# enable allowoverride privileges
<Directory /www/replace/this/with/actual/directory>
AllowOverride Options
</Directory>

Rename the htaccess File [ ^ ]

Not every system enjoys the extension-only format of htaccess files. Fortunately, you can rename them to whatever you wish, granted the name is valid on your system. Note: This directive must be placed in the server-wide configuration file or it will not work:

# rename htaccess files
AccessFileName ht.access

Note: If you rename your htaccess files, remember to update any associated configuration settings. For example, if you are protecting your htaccess file via FilesMatch, remember to inform it of the renamed files:

# protect renamed htaccess files
<FilesMatch "^ht\.">
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</FilesMatch>

Retain Rules Defined in httpd.conf [ ^ ]

Save yourself time and effort by defining replicate rules for multiple virtual hosts once and only once via your httpd.conf file. Then, simply instruct your target htaccess file(s) to inheret the httpd.conf rules by including this directive:

RewriteOptions Inherit

PHP

How to save the resource in our project code? Should we repeat writing the same code in every page/file? We can save a lot of our time and resource by putting the same code or lines into a function or procedure.

In some programming language, such as Pascal, Batch, C, PHP, etc., we can make a single special file where we can store our functions and procedure, also some constant.

Files which stored functions and procedures generally called “library“. The reason? coz it store many functions… I don’t know the other reasons..

For some constant (variables that store fixed value), we can put it on a editable file, like “config.php” in PHP or “config.tpu” in Pascal. So if we need some constant, we only need to call that file.

For example, we have some web pages that require same coding and data, but in different web design, should we write the same codes in every page? and how if there’s a minor change in the codes? it will make us work on those page again.

We can solve that problem by creating a single file that contain the function, and call the function from every page. So, if there’s any change on the code, we have to modify the file that contain the function only. In PHP, you can also include the file with “include()” function rather than calling for the function.

There a lot of free library out there, so you can use them to decrease your time in coding. For example jQuery, it is a free javascript library that store many function. There’s also Mootools, it’s has same function with jQuery.