Uploading / Storing Photos

[cfsamet]

I need some general information to get started.

I have a site I'm working on as a project - consider it a mini-facebook or something if you need a reference. Users register, have profiles, etc.

I need to be able to allow users to upload photos. My question - should I be uploading the photos and storing them in mysql, or (and I assume this is the better option) uploading them to the file system, and referencing them in mysql?

Assuming the second is the better option, can anyone point me in a direction to get started?

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

Charlie

[egami]

the second is the better option.

in your images table, just have a field where you can reference your user and their pictures.
for example..

/var/www/images/mysite/* is your images directory.

your mysql table is called images
table has the following fields..
img_id, img_userid,img_name,img_uploaded
img_id is your key
img_userid is your key to assoc the user
img_name is the name of the file uploaded into the /var/www/images/mysite directory
img_uploaded is the datetime stamp when it was actually uploaded.


Then you can map the links of the photos, call them whenever needed, etc.etc.etc.