Please call somebody give me an idea of how to make an image appear in a form when it is uploaded while filling a form and how to do it. Also how to query or include a search option in my site which will give the result of person(s) filling the form including the passport fotograph uploaded. If possible refer my to a site where i can get the script from.

Check this feature out on http://mynigeriapics.com/upload/ if this is something that you talking about then I can help you out

@phantom
something similar to that. Actually, what i wanted is a form that has a passport photograph box with specification of the width and height and how to qeury/search for the data in my database for it to be displayed in a page. E.g, An umemployed accountant submits a resume and the employer searches the database for Accountants then wolla, the list of accountants pops up with their bio data. I have a faint idea of how i want it to look like so i need more suggestions, contribution and help with the code.
Expecting your reply.

@charliebiz

I think you are talking 2 different things - uploading photo and querying db for info, but I could be wrong.

Be that as it may, it sounds like u want to do something like Phantom has. All you would do is specify via text to the user the dimensions of the photo and file extension and on the backend, check to make sure the photo to be uploaded matches the criteria. I would then store the path to the photo, not the photo itself in the db, for space reasons, along with other fields. Then you query the db for a particular information and the uploaded photo, along with other fields, gets displayed on a results page.

that's how i c it

@ yawatide
Yah,you were right. i av two question there. thank you for your reply but will the path be reliable, looking at a long period useability since the pictures are not being stored and only the pathway and please can you give me an idea of how to make the form information fall into the right table of my database when filled.Example, I am applying for a job as an accountant, my biodata fall under the table of Accountant and another person is applying for Waiter, the person's biodata falls under the waiter table. I will appreciate if you really soonest. i know others are learning. You & others av alway been a reason y i turn to this forum for resource. Thanks.

i can help out, lemme ave ur contact details. i'll buzz yu.

in addition to what nduaj has said, I will state the little that I know. Please bear in mind that I am not a DBA:

You will have at the least, 2 tables:

1a) Jobs table that has the person's name, address, title, photo, etc
1b) To ensure database normalization, you probably don't want to have the job titles repeat themselves so you could assign a number to those titles. This is where the 2nd table comes in

2) Titles table that has 2 fields: field 1 has the job id and field 2 has the actual job title

3) In Jobs table, job id is secondary key while in titles table, job id is primary key

4) You probably also want to have some unique id for the jobs table. maybe one u can auto increment

5) maybe you index the name and job title fields

6) For the photos, since you aren't hardcoding the folders where the photos are stored but creating them on the fly, I don't see any reason why you should have the concerns you state. As long as you are linking to them absolutely, you can move the same code to another server and still not have any problems. Here is how I have done it:

Say you have a unique id for jobs table. Let's just say for sake of argument, the number for the first entry is "1". so you store the photo under: /images/photos/1/1.jpg. You create the "1" folder on the fly and store 1.jpg in that folder. So in this case, you aren't technically even storing even the file path in the DB. You just call the path on the fly on the page concerned. Make sense?

Conclusion:
You won't and shouldn't have separate accountant and waiter tables. What you should have is a table for the person's info and another table (at the very least) that list the job titles.

@ Yawa-ti-de
Thank you in a million. That was an insightful explanation. I thought i had cracked the nut and came out with the solution when i was dreaming last nite until i opened my resource heaven (Nairaland) and i read your reply. I will put what you said into practise and see what comes out of it.

@ Nduaj
Thank you for your interest in helping out. I would appreciate if you make your own comment here so that others will learn. I know some forumites are interested in this. Here are my contact. charlie4biz@gmail.com, 08026640451

I am sorry if i made a wrong insinuation (i always skim thru threads)

it is a bad idea creating folders for each user, its better you name the images using their usernames and storing the image names(not paths) in the database against each user

for the search, you build sql queries, something like

select * from table where column1 like something or column2 like something or column3 like something

@webdezzi:

it is a bad idea creating folders for each user, its better you name the images using their usernames and storing the image names(not paths) in the database against each user

out of curiosity, could you explain further (in particular the folder part)? I would love to learn.

Also, when you store the image names in the DB, where are the actual images saved (as in folders)?

Thanks,

@ webdezzi
We are waiting for your reply especially me. I am still .

hi guys,
am so sori i was late in replyin but now dat mi here.lemme suggest the way 4ward.

What you need to do is, create a folder in your sever for your pictures, then in addition to the fields for each record that goes into the database, add a field called 'imagepath'. this field will store the path to the picture in the folder you created.

So in the code where yu wanna display the image, instead of having <img=pictures/mypic.jpeg> you can have <img=<? echo $row['imagepath']; ?> >

dis way, it will display the image that was stored for that record.

It really an easy algorithm, i hope i didnt confuse anyone with it. thanks

@poster, i will send you an email

@nduaj

So, if you have 1 million users, you will store 1 million photos in the same folder? Better yet, if they eventually have more than one photos, again, they all go in the same folder? Not saying it is wrong but in the name of abstraction, my solution (not necessarily the best one) has always been to insert photos in separate folders as in the future, you might say, want to do more than just hv the one photo. That way, my photos aren't mingling with urs.

Again, both our solutions get the job done. I just happen to like abstracting my solutions out upfront.

@ yawatide

well, yes, u can store one million photos in the same folder, and retrieve them uniquly by querying the database. if yu want to have more than one photo per user(like what you have in a social network), u then create a table that stores the users unique id number and the filepath of the various photos. when yu want to dispaly his bio data and pictures at the same time, u can use the SQL LEFT JOIN function.

this will work vey well. am definately not saying you are wrong , this has worked for me so far.

@ contributors
Thank you guys, you av done alot . I don't know if i should say this is the end of this trend but i think i will be back if i have any other trouble with it.

@ Viewers
Thank you for learning with me, if you are ignorant as i am.

@ Nduaj
I am still waiting for your mail. Thanks

@ Poster Very Sorry got very busy, but it looks like others have helped.

Just want to comment on storing images. It depends on the kind of site You have, if it is like a social network site I believe it is best to create a folder for each user to store their pictures. A site like charliebiz's can just make use of a folder to store all the pictures since there are no members and also you create a process to rename the pictures to make them like time stamps e.g. myimage.jpg > myimage_20080910_072422.jpg this way the name id unique.

@ThePhantom
Thanks for coming to the rescue.  As my posts have pretty much inferred, I am talking from an abstraction point of view.  The time stamp option is very good as well but I personally believe in the "What happens if the client wants something else?" approach.  It shouldn't really matter if you are talking facebook or babajidebook (hopefully, you all catch the humor there  ). To me, that's like saying, "it's okay to hit let balls in lawn tennis when you are serving during practice cos its not the real game". Soon enough, you start hitting let balls during the real game when it counts. You have to be on your A-game always.

Thinking outside the box and coding for the long run are always the first things on my mind whenever I code.  I hate revisiting code that I have turned over to the client.

Thanks

yawa-ti-de:

@webdezzi:
out of curiosity, could you explain further (in particular the folder part)?  I would love to learn.

Also, when you store the image names in the DB, where are the actual images saved (as in folders)?

Thanks,

yes, you move uploaded images to any folder of your choice, and you need to do in your script is

<img src="path_to_image_folder/<?php echo $r['imageColumn'];?>">


This is my idea and this is what i do

I store them all in 1 folder and follow a naming convention like this

username_timeOfUpload.extension, e.g webdezzi_125425276.jpg

even when the  time comes when for some not-yet-known reasons, you might want to create folders for each like you said, you can put up a script that VERY LOGICALLY check each file name, use the underscore to explode() the file name, and return the user who owns that file.

and putting upgrade in mind always, i store the image filenames in a separate table linked to user's table, later on, your client might say, "we want users to be able to upload as many pictures as possible" and u know!
you don't want to mess up the user's table with more columns




This lines does the trick, please let me know if you have a better way of writing this, i will appreciate it

<?php
// we will be needing this guy
function SetRightsToFile( $file_name )
{
@chmod( $file_name, 0666);
}



$filename= //the name of the filefield
$time=time() //the time of upload,
//warning: if you decide to use time() in your script directly, the time will change after upload because
// upload takes some time and the file name will be wrong, so better to store it in a variable first

//we check the filesize and extension,
if ( $_FILES[$filename]["size"]!=0 && preg_match('/\.(jpg|gif)$/i', $_FILES[$filename]["name"]) ){

$r = move_uploaded_file($_FILES[$filename]["tmp_name"], "pictures/"."$username_$time_".$_FILES[$filename]["name"]); // that is if you want the user interact with their files

//only if move successful, we need to create the filename to be store in the database
if($r){

$newDBname = "$username_$time_".$_FILES[$filename]["name"];
SetRightsToFile( "pictures/".$newDBname );

//then continue with the database insertion below
mysql_query("YOUR INSERT INTO QUERY" or die(mysql_error());

}
}

?>

The idea of creating a separate folder for each user is begging for a security problem like Remote File Inclusion(RFI) et al, nduaj is right. one folder for them all and make use of the db query to limit the results to for one user.

storing the directory path in a db field with a corresponding field that identifies the owner or user_id.

One thing @nduaj missed though is an issue that arises when using one folder to achieve this task,

if two users upload a file with the same file name and extension then it overwrites an older file with the same filename and extension,

to solve that part is easy, before storing the name of the file and the path in the database, encrypt/digest/randomize the file name to generate a unique file name that will never be repeated in the instant of the epoch.

cheers,