I am in the process of building a CMS using php, however I am struggling on how to handle the various different assets that a dynamic page could serve, typically an average page will contain pictures of various sizes(thumb, body, main, etc), inline images and various different assets(pdf, flv, mp4, doc, etc).
At the moment a user can upload assets and create a folder on the server, I just wanted some techniques and concepts on how to manage this in terms of deleting, editing and linking to my dynamic pages within the cms? I already have a content table which contains all the content(meta_stuff, title, friendly_url, content_text, etc).
On upload should a reference be stored somewhere in say a asset table?
Should all paths to assets(images, docs, videos,etc) be stored in one table? or separate for each asset?
Should multiple image sizes(small, medium, large, etc) be stored in different fields e.g(assetid, smallpath, mediumpath, largepath?
What technique to use to link assets to the dynamic page? should this be a joined table or single? how do I go about retrieving the different assets for a page several pdfs and several images?
How to handle deleting of assets as this could be referenced to another dynamic page?
and anything else you think would be beneficial?
Thanks for all your help
Here are some basic things to keep in mind when dealing with resources (videos, images, documents..) in a scenario similar to what you're describing.
You'd want is to know what's being uploaded, what kind of stuff are being uploaded and who's uploading. To do that, it's good to have the following tables:
Edit: Sorry about the mistake, asset_types.asset_type_id should be linked to assets.asset_type_id and NOT assesst.asset_id
(Note: This is just an outline, of course you'll have more fields)
This model makes it easy to do the following tasks
Upload: When something is uploaded, you store it somewhere (with the correct
.htaccess configurations) then store that path in the table.
Delete: When the user is trying to delete something, you check if he's the owner.
When you want to add a new type, you don't need to create a new table.
Hopefully this will put you in the right direction.
Update: Answering your comment, when a user wants to add an image to an article for example, you have two options here:
The user is presented with a button/select menu/whatever to choose the desired image, once clicked it will add <img src=LINK_TO_RESOURCE" /> to the body of the content (Make sure you protect yourself from XSS).
OR
You use your own simple markup, when the user clicks on an image this [[PREFIX_IMG:IMG_ID]] will be added to the body of the content, when the content is viewed you'll replace that "tag" with <img src="LINK_TO_RESOURCE" /> which you've acquired using IMG_ID.
2nd Update: Well you have a couple of options to handle resources that aren't directly embedded in the "articles" themselves.
You can have a field in the "articles" table you can call summary for example, and one more column to the assets table which you can call asset_sub_type and have different types like summary. Then when you want to view the summary you fetch the summary text/title from database and you add the resource to it.
(This is the technique I use) When fetching the summary from the database I see which image is the database that is related to that article and the resize it on the fly with PHP and append it to the summary.
Related
Suppose we have the web application which handle create, read, update and delete articles and each article should have gallery of images. I have to make one to one relation between Article and Gallery and one to many relation between Gallery and Media.
HTML5 gives a lot of features like multiupload, so I want to use this excellent http://blueimp.github.io/jQuery-File-Upload/ plugin for that. The problem is how to handle the file upload "in memory" like other form's data?
For example when we show the page for create new article we should be able to fill in article's data fields and select images to upload, next when we click the save button the images should start upload and after that the form should submit. When validation fails the images should be still displayed on the frontend, but on the server-side nothink should be saved.
One of the solutions is create somethink like "create entity session temporary id" before displaying the entire form and that id can be used to create temporary directory for save uploads, so after success saved form these images can be moved to appropriate directory, but how to make the "create entity session temporary id"?
The other solution I think is the "with the edit id" approach, because we can handle the uploads with previously saved gallery id, but sometimes I can't save new blank article with gallery, cause some of the fields should't be empty in db.
For the Rails I saw https://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip gem which in the Readme says:
Paperclip is intended as an easy file attachment library for Active Record. The intent behind it was to keep setup as easy as possible and to treat files as much like other attributes as possible. This means they aren't saved to their final locations on disk, nor are they deleted if set to nil, until ActiveRecord::Base#save is called.
My question is how it works?
The problem with enabling file uploads on the create mask is that you eventually end up with orphaned files. This is because a user is able to trigger the upload without saving the actual entity. While creating a very own UploadBundle I thought about this problem for a while and came to the conclusion that there is no truly proper solution.
I ended up implementing it like this:
Given the fact that our problem arise from orphaned files, I created an Orphanage which is in charge of managing these files. Uploaded files will first be stored in a separate directory, along with the session_id. This helps distinguishing files across different users. After submitting the form to create the actual entity, you can retrieve the files from the orphanage by using only your session id. If the form was valid you can move the files from the temporary orphanage directory to the final destination of your files.
This method has some pitfalls:
The orphanage directory itself should be cleaned on a regular basis using a cron job or the like.
If a user will upload files and choose not to submit the form, but instead start over with a new form, the newly uploaded files are going to be moved in the same directory. Therefore you will get both the files uploaded the first time and the second time after getting the uploaded files.
This is not the ultimate solution to this problem but more of a workaround. It is in my opinion however cleaner than using temporary entities or session based storage systems.
The mentioned bundle is available on Github and supports both Orphanage and the jQuery File Uploader plugin.
1up-lab/OneupUploaderBundle
I haven't work with the case personaly, but my co-worker had similar conundrum. She used
punkave/symfony2-file-uploader-bundle
It's a bundle that wrapps jQuery File Upload plugin. It is in the early stages and a lot of things are missing, such as event, but we gave it a shot.
That's what we do: in newAction() we create entity, generate unique dir ID, and store the ID in entity (via regular setDirId()). Than we create the form, which contains hidden field dirId.
We are uploading the files to temp dir on server via ajax, not during the submit. Ajax request requires the ID. It stores files in temp_dir/prefix_ID
Than it's quite simple. Form is sent. If form is valid - move files from temp to dest dir. If not - we have the ID, and are able to show the images.
However, we do not save information about individual files in a separate table in the database. Every time we read the contents of the folder that corresponds to our dirId.
I know it's not the solution You are asking for. It's rather a workaround.
I have created a basic website that uses MySQL and PHP to store the pages in a database following some online tutorial. The pages are used to dynamically create the menu , which I like. The main point of the site is to be an online gallery of paintings.
I can easily create this site statically in HTML, but I kind of want to try doing it dynamically. I can store the jpegs in a folder on the server and have HTML links within the page content. But is there any other way of doing it? Would it be sensible to store all the picture data and file names in a database, so that it gets retrieved when a user clicks an option from the menu?
Any thoughts would be appreciated
Research a bit more, you have one of the most answered problem in existence.
Why do you want to do it dynamically if static HTML is sufficient for your use. To make it cool is not the right reason.
About storing the jpegs in database read this article.
To BLOB or Not To BLOB - Microsoft Research
research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=64525
I just need a bit of advice on what direction to go with something I am creating.
It is a simple php based webpage for our sports and social members in our office, allowing them to create, edit, view and delete events for all members to see. Events like day trips, bbq's and all kinds of things like that.
So far I have it all working as I would like, other than one thing, being the event logos.
At present, the events are all stored in a mysql database, in one table, with a column for every aspect of the event; time, date, price, venue etc etc.
I also have two columns for the event logos, one for the venue logo, and one for the general event logo.
What I need advice on, is the best way to create a page that allows a user to upload an image to the server, browse the images already uploaded, select one, and have it's file path entered into a text input when creating the event.
Could someone offer their suggestions on the best way to go about this, or offer an alternative method for selecting and inputting a logo for the event?
Thanks
The Uploadify jQuery plugin works really well for batch and/or AJAX uploads. The way I'd handle your situation would be this:
Show all images on the same page with the form, and give each image a related radio button with the image path as the button's value, so the user simply checks the image they want to use,
If the user wants to upload images, use the Uploadify plugin and it's AJAX callback functions to dynamically populate the existing list of radio buttons.
The comment I made on your question, asking wether you store images (or their file paths) was because I think it would be much easier (and cleaner) for you to retrieve a list of uploaded images by querying a database. Personally, I don't store images in a database, only their file paths, and use PHP to handle any images that need to be deleted or moved. It's easier to assing images to other entities (especially in many-to-many relationships) that way.
If you don't want to store images' data in a separate table, I guess you'd have to use PHP file system functions to get a list of files already uploaded (glob comes to mind, although there could be better functions or this).
EDIT:
There is also a very good AJAX file browser plugin - ckFinder, but I have very little experience with it and can't really comment on its workflow, but if you find it to be a more elegant solution, you should try it out.
if i could understand your question you want to associate the image with the event i.e tag the image with the event right ??
you can use jquery's attr() function to grab the src of img and put it in input field
I ended up storing the images in the database itself.
Saved some hassle on the file path side of things.
I'm trying to make my own framework for my own projects and I would want people to upload themes for their profiles to the database. Letting them theme the look and feel of their accounts.
I first thought of having the files on the server.
A user would log in and the PHP would pick up their user id and other misc details and route the urls to their particular folder and serve the files in that folder.
an example would be a real directory of
http://www.foo.bar/users/me/style.css
http://www.foo.bar/users/me/script.js
http://www.foo.bar/users/me/index.tpl
http://www.foo.bar/users/me/otherPage.tpl
then I was thinking wow, imagine if I have 100's of users? then I would have 100's of folders in my users directory on my server, not to mention duplicate files all over the place taking up space. So ok, while this may be the fasted way to fetch a file maybe loading the markup from the database won't be such a bad idea right?
My server looks cleaner but now my database will get queried a lot more than I would want.
Then comes the major issue i think, is having files that are particular to a user. For example stylesheets may have background url's with images, so now these images needed to be linked to their real path on the server. Which brings me back to having a dedicated folder for each user to house their theme specific files.
How can i securely and effectively find a way to let users upload themes and have all files images, pdf's, docs, etc. all saved without them potentially being accessed by another account holder or thru simple hacking techniques to pull a file from the server that belongs to another user.
One solution I thought of was to only let users who are logged in view files, append to the file a unique tag that will let the user view the file if the tag matches a session variable. But then what if a user wants to share that file with another person, then tagging the file would bring my back to square 1 with the security thing not letting view the file because they wouldn't be an authorized user.
Well in any case, what would be best practices to get some of my concerns on the right path to being delt with.
P.S.
I choose these tags because in my solutions I think they will touch upon some of these aspects.
You can store html or css in a table row but be sure to sanitize the data to avoid hacks, or injections. The easiest way would be to let the user paste the code into a text area or field. If you want to let them upload files, you will need to write a script that parses the data from the uploaded file. This is more complicated as you will have to manage all filtering and sanitizing along with making pulling the data from the file and saving it to the database.
We skin our CMS to work with multiple clients and their own users. But rather than giving them the possibility of changing ANY area or style of the page we allow certain areas such as:
upload your logo
set the colour of the banner bar behind your logo (using a smart colour picker and some 'figure out the contrast between the colours' functions)
set your text colour (using a colour picker)
and so on for the items you want them to change.
We then store those in the database and serve them up through dynamic stylesheets (I know these don't cache but it's better than having hundreds of files).
I know that MySpace used to let you upload a whole host of HTML and CSS (not sure if they still do) but it's a security nightmare as the potential for XSS is enourmous.
You may want to look at HTML Purifier if you're going to let them add their own custom HTML and full themes -> http://www.htmlpurifier.org
I am making an application in which every user has to sign in first and then he can access his home page. Now on the home page, I have given an option of uploading an image. Now if the user is uploading one image I am storing the full path of the uploaded image into a database and from there I can display the image easily by an img tag...
But what should I do when the user want to upload many images? Then how should I store their full paths in a database for the same user. Give me an idea just like Orkut or Facebook. Should I make a different table with named images and should I store images in different rows with the same username. What should I do?
I don't know the logic. What should I do? How can I upload many images and how can I store their path and what will be the wisest method and how do I display many images on one page (I can display one)?
You can make a folder, named after user name and id and put all their images there.
To display many images on one page, just add more <img> tags to the page.
This seems to be more of a design question than a PHP question. I would create a separate table to store all paths, this is more normalized.
You still need to handle the UI, but if you are doing a sort of gallery then that is fairly simple with some jQuery sideshows or something like that.
Yes, you want to use a separate table to store the image paths. You'll most likely want a record ID, the User ID, and the path to the image. You could also add a field to contain the sorting order for the images.
Having the sorting order field will allow you to page through the photos if there is more than one page of photos.
Your thinking is correct where you suggest creating a separate table with rows containing the image path and the username. The concept that you are dealing with is called cardinality. I'd recommend that you take a few minutes to read about this concept, since it is so important to database design.
In this case, you're talking about a one-to-many relationship between the user and the images.