How to display an Image from a mysql blob

Question

I am trying to display an image from a MySQL blob field. I have tried a few different things and none of them seem to work.

I have tried:

• hea

Answer 1

Another option you might consider (assuming you are on Apache):

Create an .htaccess file with a mod_rewrite for all image extensions (png, jpg, gif).

Have it redirect to a php script that looks up the image requested in the DB. If it is there, it echos out the header and BLOG. If it isn't there, it returns a standard 404.

This way you can have:

Which then gets redirected ala:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|png)$ imagelookup.php

This script does a query for the image, which (obviously) assumes that the requested image has a unique key that matches the filename in the URL:

 $url = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
 $url_parts = explode("/", $url);
 $image_name = array_pop($url_parts);

Now you have just the image filename. Do the query (which I shall leave up to you, along with any validation methods and checks for real files at the address, etc.).

If it comes up with results:

 header('Content-type: image/jpeg');
 header('Content-Disposition: inline; filename="adorablepuppy.jpg"');
 print($image_blog);

otherwise:

 header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");

FYI: I have no idea if this would be bad in terms of performance. But it would allow you to do what I think you want, which is output the image as though it were a flat image file on the server using a simple image element. I'm inclined to agree that BLOBs are not the best way to go, but this does avoid any cross-browser issues.