Question

First sorry I’m a big beginner.

Would like to ask a more experienced developers opinion.

I have small website a really small social network for sports, and I would like to allow the users to create image folders and upload multiple images there.

As I was reading through the internet, they say that it is bad to store the images in the database, only save the location of the image.

But this is the part what I don’t understand, more precisely the logic what I don’t really understand.

I go to the users profile select the folder, but what is the way to show the images?

Is it a good idea to select the folder and use scandir to get the images? And if I’m scanning the folder is it possible to limit it to, for example, limit it to only one image at first what points to the gallery?

And I was thinking to separate the location path table in the database tied to the user ID, won’t that be a problem? Won’t that make the database really large?

Sorry if these are stupid questions, I would just really like to know.

Now I don’t want anybody to write this for me, just give an opinion about the logic.

Thank you.

Answer 1

I would recommend you to store all information about the folder and pictures in the database.
For example a schema like the one in the diagram below. The advantage of having the data in a database is that you can get as many pictures as you want. And later you can add additional information to the table (e.g., permission for other users, comments, etc.)