Save image URLs in MySQL? - php

Question

I actually have a few questions here: My end goal is to write a script that will automatically display all the images that i have saved inside my database(If i add new images to my database(image URLs), each time i refresh the page i would like those "new" images to be instantly displayed as well).
What is the proper way to save an image URL inside MySQL? Currently i set my input type to VARCHAR; is that okay for image URLs?
Also, at the moment i'm working with WAMP server just to test how the site is working; so i put an image inside the www folder(within the same folder as my php script) and inside the database table i simply put the URL as follows: image.png is this the correct way to enter an image URL inside my database?
What is the best way to display these images in a sequence? The following code is what i have so far:(the image widths will take up about 70% of the page so the images will not be next to each other; they will be in a column form.)
<?php
$db_host="host";
$db_user="user";
$db_pass="pass";
$db_name="name";
$db_table="table";
mysql_connect($db_host, $db_user, $db_pass) or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db($db_name) or die(mysql_error());
$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM tablename");
$result = mysql_query($query);
$num = mysql_num_rows($result);
for($count = 0; $count < $num; $count++)
{
//output the rows one by one(the actual images, not the URLs)
mysql_fetch_row($result);
echo("<br/>");
}
?>
I don't know if i should be using mysql_fetch_row in there..
I want my images to have some space in between; i was thinking the best way to accomplish that would be to add a "br" tag at the end of my loop so that every time a new image is displayed, a line break will be added to the end of the page.. Is that the best way to do it?
Thanks a bunch in advance!

Answer 1

To your first question, yes. To your second, also yes, if all your images are stored in the same directory. Mostly it's a matter of preference though.
Your for loop should look like this:
for($count = 0; $count < $num; $count++) {
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
echo "<img src='". htmlspecialchars($row["image"]) ."' alt='image' />";
}
br tags would probably be a bad idea. Set the images' display property to block in your CSS file. There are plenty of CSS manuals online.

Answer 2

With
$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM tablename");
$result = mysql_query($query);
$num = mysql_num_rows($result);
you do some things twice. You do not want $query to be the result of a mysql_query() call and then apply mysql_query() again.
In this case, the second call would happen with a resource object instead of a string - you got informed about it. By putting "" around, you turn it into a string again, but one which doesn't make sense to mysql.
To verify that, try to put or die(mysql_error()) to the problematic calls.
And to fix that, you can try
$query = "SELECT * FROM tablename";
$result = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());
$num = mysql_num_rows($result);
BTW: you don't need $num when you replace the for loop with
while ($row = mysql_fetch_row($result))
// do stuff with $row
}

Answer 3

I've done a previous project based on image storage in a SQL database. the best way to store the images would be as a link, ie, '/stored_images/imagefilename.png'. When you need to reference the images just get the images into a while loop for each row in the table.
ie.
to get the images
<?php
$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM tablename");
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($query)) {
echo '<img src="' . $row['column of url storage in SQL'] . '" />';
}
That will output all the images in the database, just change 'column of url storage in SQL' with the actual column name that you store in the SQL DB. also replace 'tablename' in the SQL query with the name of the table the images are being stored in.