Saving the images in database

Question

What is the best technique to save images in the mysql database.Should I save images as blob data or save it in directories.The images will be showed every time the user visits his or her profile. -Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The best technique would be to save them in the file-system and save their paths in the database.

The database is meant for data, the file-system for files.

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The technique I used in the past to make sure there are no duplicates was to hash the contents of the file and save it as the result, so I get something like:

42efb15825666918118ba72128195246dbae4976.jpg

The actual name is saved in the database. This was, the chance of having duplicates is negligible.