Posted by The Natural Philosopher on 01/09/08 08:34

Norman Peelman wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> missmoo wrote:
>>> Hey,
>>>
>>> I would like to know what the differences are in terms of security,
>>> reliability and resources between storing user-uploaded images in a
>>> file or storing them in a mySQL database.
>>>
>>> Our company is starting an image-competition soon, and I am not sure
>>> if I should write the php script to insert the binary code into a
>>> mySQL database or if I should just store the files in a dedicated
>>> folder and the data about them in the mySQL database.
>>>
>>> We are expecting relatively big loads of files, at least 10,000 in the
>>> first 2 months.
>>>
>>> Which system should I use? Is there a real difference between the two?
>>> our server is apache2, if that has any effects on the answer..
>>>
>>> Thank you!
>>>
>>> Moriel Schottlender
>>
>> I thought it would be a big issue to stuff them in the database, but
>> it was - with one notable issue* - easy.
>>
>> Once indsider the database, they can only be accessed BY the database,
>> and the root user,. A considerable extra bit of security, and, since
>> the databasse is backed up regularly, a Good Thing in that sense as
>> well.. no need to explicitly back up a directory of uploaded files,
>> nor worry about access permnissions to it.
>>
>> * the one notable exception was a 'feature' of PHP file handling, I
>> wanted to use SQL LOAD_FILE to load the temporary file into the
>> database. BUT it does not actually exist on disk until php closes..a
>> tad too late to be useful. move_uploaded_file() did not create a disk
>> file either,. But copy() did. The bug and workaround are on the php
>> docs site somewhere.
>>
>
> Not true... my website does this all day long. Tested with a sleep
> function and watched temp file get created and processed in designated
> directory. Check your open_basedir and upload_tmp_dir directives.
>

It created the temp files in /tmp.

They wouldn't load.

I moved them to another filename in /tmp.

They wouldn't load.

I copied them to another filke in /tmp.

They did load.

I'd be happy to know what I did wrong. but what you suggest ain't it.

>
>> The other gotcha was maximum file and memory limits on php. I upped
>> these from 16Mbyte to 64Mbytes, and did accidentally upload a 60Mbyte
>> PDF succesfully.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>

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