Question

getting to know my databases, at some point in my application the user would be able to upload a photo (or photos). My friend told me that using filenames would be better as opposed to a blob of text. Should I use varchar or varbinary for this?

Also if the user would upload more pictures (lets say max would be 10) would it be better to create a table for the pictures and a connecting one such as userspictures or would it be better to store all the pictures in a string that would be separated by commas or something to that effect?

Help is really appreciated thanks.

Answer 1

As your friend said, it’s better to store only the filename in the database.
I would suggest VARCHAR(255).

I really recommend you to create another table for multiple files:

CREATE TABLE photos (
  id INTEGER UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT,
  user_id INTEGER UNSIGNED,
  filename VARCHAR(255) UNIQUE NOT NULL,

  PRIMARY KEY(id)
);

SELECT id, filename FROM photos WHERE user_id = [user_id]