Is it possible to store an Image file (.jpg, .gif, etc) in MYSQL database? Or do it just stores in system and takes reference path of image?
I am using ASP.NET C#, so if you have sample code, it would be great if you could share it.
Yes, you can store image files (and any other files) in a database as binary data.
In MySQL, the BLOB data type can be used to accomplish this.
A BLOB is a binary large object that can hold a variable amount of data. The four BLOB types are TINYBLOB, BLOB, MEDIUMBLOB, and LONGBLOB. These differ only in the maximum length of the values they can hold. [...]
BLOB values are treated as binary strings (byte strings). They have no character set, and sorting and comparison are based on the numeric values of the bytes in column values.
First of here a post which is pretty similar to this one: Should I store my images in the database or folders?
Secondly a sample for storing images into database:
http://www.dotnetcurry.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=129&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
In my opinion it depends whether you choose to store images in your database or in folders. Both methods have there pros and cons.
Here a short comment from asp.net forums:
Should You Really Store Images in the Database?
About ten years ago, I started one of
the first Internet projects—an image
data bank. We were supposed to deliver
images of various sizes and resolution
to registered users. Each image was
designed as a collection of images,
from the thumbnail to the highest
resolution. The largest image
available was about 4 MB. Each image
stored in the archive took up a total
of 6 MB of space.
The back-end database was not running
on a Microsoft platform but provided
support for BLOB fields. Without much
debate, we decided to store
descriptions and other catalog
information in the database and to
store images as individual files under
a well-known path. We also stored in
the database enough information for
the software to retrieve the file.
Being designed for a relatively small
number of registered users, the
application never showed scalability
problems and at no time did anyone on
the team, or any users, complain about
performance.
Can this brief experience—especially
an experience from a relatively old
age of software and database
technologies—be used as an example of
the superiority of file-based storage
over database storage? Certainly not,
but reading between the lines of how
modern DBMS systems implement BLOB
fields, I've used this experience to
formulate an idea about image storage
and databases.
In short, should you consider storing
images in a database? If you need to
edit the images frequently, I suggest
storing the images as separate files
on the server's hard drive. If the
size of the images are very large (for
example, hundreds of megabytes), I
suggest storing the images as separate
files in the file system. If your
images are essentially read-only and
relatively static, and if you measure
the size in kilobytes, you can
consider storing your images in the
database.
4GuysFromRolla.com has an article on this that I used as reference when I was writing code to store binary data directly in a database: https://web.archive.org/web/20210304133428/https://www.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/120606-1.aspx
Personally I find it to be far less trouble to store the image in the filesystem and a pointer in the database.
You have to create a byte array from the image and store that in the database.
public static byte[] ConvertImageToByteArray(Image imageIn)
{
var ms = new MemoryStream();
imageIn.Save(ms, ImageFormat.Png);
return ms.ToArray();
}
To convert the data back to an image:
public static Image ConvertByteArrayToImage(byte[] byteArrayIn)
{
var ms = new MemoryStream(byteArrayIn);
Image returnImage = Image.FromStream(ms);
return returnImage;
}
Take this... ASP.NET Image uploading with Resizing You can find variety of examples.
My company currently uses a database with BLOB data for documents and images, and we are trying to mOve it over to only storing references to the files on the server. The databse is many many GBs, when it should be 20 MB. I would recommend against BLOB because it definitely slows down the DB.
Related
I will create MySQL database for online store. This store has around 3000 products. Each product has 5 photos.
I created tables for products table (product_id, product_name) and images table (image_id, Image_details, Product_id)
What is best way to insert photo?
*i am using C# (desktop app) as GUI
Although, with BLOB objects you can achieve this, it not the preferred way. You have to store the location of the images (similarly for other large files), when the query result turned, use the location to access the images.
Keep in mind, your images will be increased over time, so, in practice, we apply a directory hierarchy, usually two will be enough. One can use the first two letter of the name of the image, however, this will be unbalanced directory structure. The better idea is using hash based randomization to distribute the files evenly over the sub-directories. An example (in Java) can be found here.
Dont save your images in the database, it's not the best way. save the paths to the images in your table related to the products.
Use cloud Blob storages or FileSystem instead of saving in your relational database. It is not recommended storing a lot of images >1mb in your database due performance, backup and maintenability.
However if you have a small app and are really sure about going this way, you could convert your image to a byte array and save in a MySQL BLOB field. Check the link below for a sample:
C# saving images to MySql database as blob
Check:
Should I store my images in the database or folders?
How can I save an Image to the File System?
https://learn.microsoft.com/pt-br/azure/storage/blobs/storage-quickstart-blobs-dotnet?tabs=windows
https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/article/azure-storage-crud-operations-in-mvc-using-c-sharp-part-two/
This question already has answers here:
Storing Images in DB - Yea or Nay?
(56 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
I want to save the profile picture, and I want to know what is the best option.
-Saving the path in the DB and load the image according to his location.
-Save the whole image.
I'm using EntityFrameWork and SQL server Database
It depends on your application needs, Look at the answers in this post Storing Images in DB - Yea or Nay?
Storing images into database has some pros and cons
Images stored in the database do not require a different backup strategy. Images stored on filesystem do
It is easier to control access to the images if they are in a database. Idle admins can access any folder on disk. It takes a really determined admin to go snooping in a database to extract the images
On the other hand there are problems associated
Require additional code to extract and stream the images
Latency may be slower than direct file access
Heavier load on the database server
I suggest to save the image somewhere on file system and store path of that in database.
Advantages:
Images will be static files and can be served directly by Web Server and also can be cached easily.
DB server will not be overloaded with lot of request to fetch image data.
No need of dynamic code to serve files.
File system storage is less expensive then DB storage.
All over the web, most of the images are stored in filesystem.
The application is written in C#. It uses nHibernate and SQLite and runs on Windows. I should store pictures and bind them to a user.
So far, I don't really know what is the best way to store the pictures. If I decide to store the path of the picture and save the image in a directory, I'll have problems as soon as the directory or the file is renamed or moved. In the other hand, storing image as BLOB in SQLite is slow as I have to "cast" the image into a bytes array before storing and when I retrieve, I have to set the bytes array into an image.
What is the recommended way for this?
I wrote an image user type for this purpose. With it, you just pass the Image object, not its bytes: http://weblogs.asp.net/ricardoperes/archive/2009/09/17/nhibernate-image-user-type.aspx.
This question already has answers here:
Closed 10 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Storing Images in DB - Yea or Nay?
Pretty straight forward, I am hosting a site where users can upload pictures, and I have a .net File upload control working appropriately.. I'm just wondering what methodology I should use to store them on the server..
I can use the SaveAs() method off the FileUpload control which saves it as an actual file..
I can break the image down to a Byte[] and store it in the database for access.
I believe the real question here is.. Do I want the load on IIS or Sql Server 2008 R2?
What's the general consensus on which methodology I should use and why? Thanks!
There is no general consensus, because neither method is ideal.
Storing the images as files means that it becomes harder to scale the application to run on multiple servers. Then you would need a SAN/NAS to store the files instead of a local disk.
Storing the images in the database means that you are using a lot of the cache space for image data, slowing down other queries, and it also increases the size of the database, and the backups. It also means that you have to serve the images through a page, you can't just request the file directly.
So, it comes down to how much images you will have, and how scalable you need the application to be.
Avoid getting them in the database. That will make your DB a lot larger in size just because of a few files. That also affects the backup size.
I do not see any real gain on having the actual file bytes in the database. If you have the physical path to the file in the file system, that would suffice.
That also allows you to have your own backup strategy for the files.
I would like to store images in database by converting them in to binary objects or i will store them in to a temp folder and will save the path in my database. But i am unable to do the programming so can any give me a sample code to save images in to sql database using Asp.net.
Here we go with some links:
http://www.beansoftware.com/ASP.NET-Tutorials/Binary-Files-To-Database.aspx
http://www.beansoftware.com/asp.net-tutorials/images-database.aspx
http://www.beansoftware.com/asp.net-tutorials/images-database.aspx
That should get you started, code wise.
better to store image in a folder and save the path in database, which would be much faster than saving in database.
Note dont use datatype image, which is going to change form database itself
: read this
Store the images path on DB instead of storing as Binary, because it hurts performance. In SQL server, BLOB datatypes are stored in seperate pages called LOB_data page and on data pages pointers will be linked with LOB_data page. You cannot create an index over BLOB data type also. Hence, it adversely affects the performance. Ideal solution would be to store the images in a shared drive and storing the image link in database.