Chapter 12. Working with BLOBs

Every highly developed database supports a method for storing entire files in the database. This can be essential for content management tools. However, some people prefer to store files in the filesystem, not in the database. Instead of uploading a file into the database, you only have to store the name of the file in the database. The problem with this algorithm is that the consistency of the data in the database and the filesystem needs to be checked. In addition, you have to back up the files and the database individually, and it is not as easy as dumping a database including BLOBs (Binary Large Objects).

This chapter is dedicated to all people who want to store their files in a database efficiently. You will also see how file uploads can be handled with PHP.