insert and retrieve image from Blob

Question

I'm doing something wrong while inserting or retrieving a image in/from a mysql blob field. I looked at a lot of questions allready asked here at stackoverflow, but cant get mine to work.

field:

<input type="file" name="filename" id="filename" />

inserting code:

$img = chunk_split(base64_encode(file_get_contents(
    $_FILES['filename']['tmp_name']
)));
$insrtSQL = "
    INSERT INTO table (s_id, s_name, s_image, s_text, s_link, t_id) 
    VALUES ('a', 'a', '$img', 'a', 'a', 'a')
";

echoing code

<?php 
echo '<img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,' . 
     base64_encode($row_Sss['s_image']) . 
     '" width="290" height="290">' 
?>

I know i should use MySQLi or PDO instead, but thats not an option for now. What am I missing? or doing wrong?

Answer 1

Wait... Are you BASE64 encoding your data - twice?

First you do a base64_encode() on the uploaded file, then you select it from your table later on and echo() it yet again with base64_encode(). Try removing the base64_encode when doing your echo, and also try omitting the chunk_split() command when inserting data into the table.

Also, you don't have to base64 encode any data if you're looking to store binary data into a mySQL blob field, just do something this:

$img = mysql_real_escape_string(file_get_contents($_FILES['filename']['tmp_name']));

Then you may echo it with base64_encode() in your HTML.

Remember, since you're storing large chunks of data in your table, avoid using "SELECT * " queries, as this will significantly decrease performance. If you'll be storing much more larger chunks of data in your database, consider moving your data to the disk.

Answer 2

Your insert statement is just inserting a base64 string, not the base64-encoded data. Try passing it through the MySQL FROM_BASE64 function:

$insrtSQL = "INSERT INTO table (s_id, s_name, s_image, s_text, s_link, t_id) VALUES ('a', 'a', FROM_BASE64('$img'), 'a', 'a', 'a')";

This makes the MySQL engine decode the base64 string back into binary data for storage.