Should I store images in db, folder or use other services?

Personally I would store them in the filesystem and just store the URL within the database. Typically database storage is more expensive. Unless you have good reason for storing them in the database (storing versions of the image or storing an image that changes dynamically) I would use the filesystem.

I don't like to store files in the db, and storing them in the filesystem is a nightmare to manage.

If I had a live project like yours I would try some cloud file storage like S3 or Cloudinary. It cost some money but the amount of headache handled worth it.

By the way, if someone know something like a local S3 like server, please let me know it would be awesome. I mean some kind of local db made to store files with an unique hash or something.

I would use Amazon's S3 and use a file system class (like FlySystem) to easily manage those images. The reason I would use S3 is because you don't need to worry about space and Amazon automatically takes care of redundancy for you. It keeps your filesystem clean and won't bog down the harddrive of your server.

I would not store the binary data in the database, especially if you plan to serve these images to a browser at some point.

I'd store them on something like Amazon S3 and just store the URL in the DB. You can serve the images directly from S3 and even set it up as a CDN. Storing them in the local filesystem of the server limits your ability to scale the application past 1 server, so I would not recommend that.

Thank you all!

So if I went over and began using S3, would I have to upload both the full version and the thumbnail - or should i just generate the thumbnail when it's requested?

You should upload the thumbnail too. It is wasted server resource to generate a thumbnail from the original each time you want to display it.

I would just upload the original image and generate the thumbnail dynamically. Cache the thumbnail after it's generated so you don't have to keep generating it. That will keep you from having to keep track of both the the original and thumbnail versions of the image, and you won't have to generate the thumbnail on every request.

Alright, so... Finally I can hear that storing images (in my case) in db aren't the best way to go around it.

Thank you everybody. I appreciate it :D

• Small = filesystem is fine, store URL like chrisgeary92 said. Although this doesn't stop you from using Amazon S3.
• Large/scaleable = offsite (mentioned above)

Anyway the tag Site Improvements is off topic :-D

@pmall An alternative to S3 http://www.openstack.org/software/openstack-storage/

https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/SwiftInstall

and a rasberry pi implementation :) http://openstack.prov12n.com/openstack-swift-raspberry-pi-23-usb-keys-aka-ghettosan-v2/

@threeel Thanks :)

I've seen this before but it seemed hard to install & configure. I'll have a look.