Image upload storage strategies

Question

When a user uploads an image to my site, the image goes through this process;

• user uploads pic
• store pic metadata in db, giving the image a unique id

Answer 1

You can convert a username to md5 and set a folder from 2-3 first letters of md5 converted username for the avatars and for images you can convert and playing with time , random strings , ids and names

8648b8f3ce06a7cc57cf6fb931c91c55 - devcline

Also a first letter of the username or id for the next folder or inverse

It will look like

Structure:

stream/img/86/8b8f3ce06a7cc57cf6fb931c91c55.png    //simplest
stream/img/d/2/0bbb630d63262dd66d2fdde8661a410075.png //first letter and id folders
stream/img/864/d/8b8f3ce06a7cc57cf6fb931c91c55.png // with first letter of the nick
stream/img/864/2/8b8f3ce06a7cc57cf6fb931c91c55.png   //with unique id
stream/img/2864/8b8f3ce06a7cc57cf6fb931c91c55.png    //with unique id in 3 letters
stream/img/864/2_8b8f3ce06a7cc57cf6fb931c91c55.png   //with unique id in picture name

Code

$username = substr($username_md5, 1); // to cut first letter from the md5 converted nick
$username_first = $username[0]; // the first letter
$username_md5 = md5($username); // md5 for username
$randomname = uniqid($userid).md5(time());  //for generate a random name based on ID

you can try also with base64

 $image_encode = strtr(base64_encode($imagename), '+/=', '-_,');
 $image_decode = base64_decode(strtr($imagename, '-_,', '+/='));

Steam And dokuwiki use this structure.