Hello,
How do you insert image to mysql database? I prefer this to avoid uploading image to a dir and also to have all my text and image in just one place which is the database, but I heard that inserting image to mysql database is not recommended. Why might that be?
Also can I use
<input name='new_image' id='new_image' type='file' />
to load the image to mysql database?
If not, what is the recommended way?

Hello,
I have several questions about inserting image to a mysql database:
1-I prefer inserting image to mysql database to avoid uploading image to a dir and also to have all my text and image in just one place which is the database, but I heard that inserting image to mysql database is not recommended. Why might that be?
2-How can I do this - insert image to database?
3-Regardless of the answer to question 2, can I use<input name='new_image' id='new_image' type='file' /> as well to load the image?
4-Finally, to what type of datafield would I insert the image?

Use a column type that supports binary data (IIRC, in MySQL, this is BLOB; in PostgreSQL, it's BYTEA).

How file uploads work in PHP: http://us3.php.net/manual/en/features.file-upload.php

Usually storing a few dozen or hundred kilobytes of file data in a single row is fine in most database engines. More than that and there are many complications, among which is memory usage (usually you have to buffer the entire row into RAM and then send it to the browser instead of stream it directly from the database). Most database engines, including MySQL, also impose maximum query sizes which can limit the data going into the table.

yes this can be complicated and really slow things down so if you must do this then also do things like strip exif data where possible and anything you can to reduce file size.

I've done this before just fine though it is only recommended with a LARGE amount of smaller images or in cases where you have or may have a lot of people editing images on your site (using gd or image magick).

For as to how you do it, you would load the $_POST['image'] dirrectly into the database same as you would if it was a text field except you have to run stripslashes() on the data first:

(ensure the data field is set to BINARY)
You would pull it out with a separate php file that sends the image header along with the echo from the binary field.