TalkPHP - Adding Images to a database from a folder

Hey all

I am currently working on a new gallery script and i thought i would show my script on adding images to a database that are in a folder. This can be very helpful if you don't want to add them all one at a time.

First things first need to connect to the database. You can do this in your own way.

PHP Code:


		
			
 include("config.php");

 connectTo(); //connect function

Now to set up some variables.

PHP Code:


		
			
$path = "../images/"; // link to images

$counter = 1; //counter used later

$dh = opendir($path); //open the image location

Now we can loop through all the images in that folder and add them to the database.

first we want to stop other files from being added including the "." & ".." folders plus any files like index or something.

PHP Code:


		
			
while ($file = readdir($dh))

 if($file != "." && $file != ".." && $file != "Thumbs.db" && $file != "index.html" && $file != "index.php") 

 {

   {

   

   }

 }

Now because we are adding to the database we want to get some information from the image. In this example the database base has the following fields.

Title - Title of the image
Date - Date is was submitted
About - Information about the image
Views - Number of views
Filename - The file name of the image "image.jpg"

Now because we are adding images via a folder we dont know anything about the image as in a description or even the actual title of the image the user wants, but this system allows for easy adding of images in a short time. So we can actually add some basic information for each image that the user can then change later.

PHP Code:


		
			
$title = explode(".",$file);

$image_title = $title[0];

$about = "Please enter your discription here";

$date = date("d, M Y");

Now one thing we want to do is actually check the database before we add to it. We do not want to add images to it that are already in it.

PHP Code:


		
			
//Check for any images already in database to not add ones we already have

$query = "SELECT * FROM images WHERE filename='".$file."'";

$query = mysql_query($query);

$number = mysql_num_rows($query);

if($number > 0){

   echo "The file <b>".$file."</b> is already in the database<\br>";

}else{

  //image ain't in the database already so add it

  $query = "INSERT INTO images

  (

    title,

    date,

    about,

    views,

    filename 

  ) 

  VALUES

  (



    '$image_title',

    '$date',

    '$about',

    '$views',

    '$file'

  )";



$query = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());

}

Of course we want to add something to tell the user we have added the image to the database and give the details for each one.

PHP Code:


		
			
if($query){

  echo $counter.". The file<b>".$file." </b>has been added to the database.....<br>";

  echo "<b>Image Details</b><\br>";

  echo "<b>Filename:</b> ".$file."<\br>";

  echo "<b>Image Title:</b> ".$image_title."<\br>";

  echo "<b>Image Discription:</b> ".$about."<\br>";

  echo "<\br><\br>";

                        

  $counter++;    

}

Now there is one last thing we want to add and that is a timer kind of. We dont want to add each image straight after each other. This may cause it to crash. So we want to add something to give it a couple of seconds to recover then add the next one. We can use a for loop to do this.

PHP Code:


		
			
for($i=0;$i<5000;$i++){

                      

}

Now lastly we want to close the link with the directory

PHP Code:


		
			
closedir($dh); // close dir

And there you go a nice way of adding images from a folder to a database :-D. There are many things you can check for including the file type as this only stops certain files, but it can be added to.