Android - best way to upload image to the server using php - php

Question

I need to upload a bitmap image to my server but it takes a lot of time while uploading. I use base64 to encode the image and decode it while adding it to the database as Blob.
I want to know what is the other alternative way to upload an image and which one is more efficient.
Here what I have been trying:
HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
params.setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.PROTOCOL_VERSION,HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1);
HttpConnectionParams.setConnectionTimeout(params, 20000);
HttpConnectionParams.setSoTimeout(params, 15000);
DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient(params);
HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(url);
namevaluepair.add(new BasicNameValuePair("icon", getStringDrawing(bmIcon)))
httpPost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(namevaluepair));
httpClient.execute(httpPost);
public static String getStringDrawing(Bitmap bm) {
String image_str = "";
try {
ByteArrayOutputStream stream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
byte[] byte_arr;
bm.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.PNG, 90, stream);
byte_arr = stream.toByteArray();
image_str = Base64.encodeBytes(byte_arr);
} catch (NullPointerException e) {
}
return image_str;
}
In PHP I tried to save it in Blob and in folder here some of the codes:
$Drawing = $_POST {'drawing'};
$buffer = base64_decode($Drawing);
$file = fopen("PostImage/P".$ID.".png", 'wb');
fwrite($file, $buffer);
fclose($file);
The second try:
$Drawing = $_POST {'drawing'};
$buffer = base64_decode($Drawing);
$buffer = mysql_real_escape_string($buffer);
$query = "INSERT INTO `drawposts` (`PostID`, `UserID`,`DatePost`, `Drawing`) VALUES (NULL,'$UserID','$Date','$buffer')";
$sth = mysql_query($query);

Answer 1

Look at the FileEntity . Something like
File Picture = new File("/path/to/jpg");
FileEntity f = new FileEntity(picture,"application/octet-stream");
HttpPost post = new HttpPost("my URL");
post.setEntity(f);
post.setHeader("Content-type", "application/octet-stream");