php [PHP] Storing images in MySQL database as Base64 string

[whitebread]

I am building a web site for a friend of mine and want to store images in a MySQL database as a Base64 string. I have seen this done before (embedding images in a web page as a Base64 string). My question is: how can I write a PHP script which will allow me to upload an image and convert it to a Base 64 string? Would it be better to store it as a binary file in the database? My goal is to not have a bunch of image files sitting around in a directory because my web host doesn't allow me to have write access by PHP scripts (I only have write access by FTP), but I need a way to upload images.

[Phouchg]

Base64 disadvantages:

- size of data increases

- eats away (on a shared hosting - precious) processing time

Base64 advantages:

- uh... "telegraph-safe"?

Encoding:

// user_file is the name of the file upload control of your HTML form
$data = base64_encode(file_get_contents($_FILES['user_file']['tmp_name']));

It might be a good idea to validate the uploaded file, to check if it really is an image file.

If you have GD extension enabled, place the following check before actual reading and subsequent encoding:

if (!getimagesize($_FILES['user_file']['tmp_name']))

The function above will bungle if GD thinks the uploaded file doesn't paint a pretty picture, so to speak.

Decoding:

// you'll have to know MIME type of the image, though
// in this example image/png is used
echo '<img src="data:image/png;base64,"'.base64_decode($data).' alt="" />';

Note, however, that Data URI has limited support by IE8 (less than 32 KB and only in certain elements) and no support at all by versions before that!

Or you could connect to a directory using FTP capabilities of PHP. Quite like operating an appendix through one's mouth, though.

[neoraptor]

change your hosting, basically not good idea to store images as base64.

[Fourjays Veteran]

If your web host doesn't allow PHP scripts to write files then I'd move to another web host if possible. Chances are that if they don't allow PHP scripts to write files then they aren't going to be very happy about you storing them in a database either (very large size for a database and it will use a lot of processing time, as cralias said).

Rather weird restriction in this day and age.

[paxa]

i agree with fourjays.the best practice is always to save a pointer to where the image is stored,not the image itself.

by doing so you can decrease the database size, processing time and so on.

if you cannot write files using php or other type, move to another host asap.

[hotdog666al]

Just because it can be done doesn't mean you should do it, and in this case, you definitely shouldn't be storing images in the DB like that!!

[seznam]

as others said, its not smart to keep images in database, even in base64 format.

In case you still want to do it you can use the mysql base64 functions: FROMBASE64() and TO_BASE64()

[JonnyLH]

Storing images in the DB is a wonky solution which'll probably just kill your shared hosting.

 

Why don't you create a framework which can work with image sharing sites. For example, a function which uploads and then returns the direct URL of that image for you to then store in the DB. If there's no direct API's out there, you could use cURL and grep's to upload and retrieve the direct URL.