Re: Saving file into database

[Kurt Haegeman]

Erich Beyrent wrote:

Use the BLOB, Luke!

See your local MySQL manual for details.

We're using BLOBs to store PDF in our database, and through the use of
   

HTTP 
 

headers, we're able to let user download the PDFs without having to
   

store a 
 

local copy on disk, directly from the database (content-disposition 
header).
   

Hi Kurt,

I have been using MySQL to store links to PDFs which live in other
directories.  

Is there an advantage to storing the PDFs directly into the database?

-Erich-

 

Not all PDF's are viewable for all users. First it is determined whether 
the user can be granted access to the file, before he's presented with a 
hyperlink. This authorization is stored in the database, thus our web 
app can access and present the PDF using the same protocol it used for 
authentication/authorization. It can even use the same open database 
connection. No need to deal with other protocols and 
protection/authorization of those files on file system- and web 
server-level: if you're not authorized, you can't access them in any 
way. Backoffice maintenance and content management can be done with only 
a single database connection. In our case, this resulted in much simpler 
and safer code.

Other advantages I can think of are, amongst other, master/slave 
replication of the database, and no required needs to tune your database 
server for anything else than MySQL activity. Disadvantages which come 
to mind are a much larger database, which is often more difficult to 
maintain than large file systems. To some people, at least. Just ideas, 
food for thought.

Regards,
Kurt.