Posted by Rik on 07/28/06 02:22

Kentor wrote:
> Hello, I have a website to list vacation rentals and housings. I want
> to be able to modify images after a user has submitted their listing
> with/without images.
> How it works: the first time they submit their listing, they enter all
> the info and then add any images onto a field by browsing to the
> image.
> They can have up to 7 images. Once the person is done I have two
> fields
> in my database "pics" and "ext" pictures are to set the number of
> pictures for this listing and ext are the extensions for each picture.
> The ext field goes something like this: jpg.bmp.jpg. and pics would be
> 3. the way the files are stored are by post id, so for example if the
> post id is 192 then images would be 192_0.jpg 192_1.bmp and 192_2.jpg.
> Ok now, i need to find some way to allow people to delete or change
> the images or upload images if they dont have any at all.... I need to
> somehow display the already existing images, and then check each field
> to see if its empty or not and somehow concatinate with the existing
> images or something. After the function is executed, a simple update
> statement is needed.
> I just get lost in all of this. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

IMHO it's a very, very ineffective way to handle the images.
If you want to allow them to upload different kinds of images, I'd just make
a seperate tabel called images, containing the post id & the image name.
Give the images some kind of unique filename (your naming scheme is
allright) and store that. That way, image adding & deleting is just a matter
of adding/deleting records (and the files obviously). You could even give
them the option to order them in the way they wish.

Golden rule in databases: don't try to put information in one field you'll
always have to split up later to be of any use.

Another way to do this is to create a folder for every post id, and store
the images there.

Grtz,
--
Rik Wasmus

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