How do I store binary data in MySQL?

Q: How do I store binary data in MySQL?

Solution:

The basic answer is in a BLOB data type / attribute domain. BLOB is short for Binary Large Object and that column data type is specific for handling binary data.

you should be aware that there are other binary data formats:
TINYBLOB/BLOB/MEDIUMBLOB/LONGBLOB
VARBINARY
BINARY
Each has their use cases. If it is a known (short) length (e.g. packed data) often times BINARY or VARBINARY will work. They have the added benefit of being able ton index on them.

For a table like this:

CREATE TABLE binary_data (
    id INT(4) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    description CHAR(50),
    bin_data LONGBLOB,
    filename CHAR(50),
    filesize CHAR(50),
    filetype CHAR(50)
);

Flat File Databases

Question: What are your best practices around creating flat file database structures in PHP? A lot of the more mature PHP flat file frameworks I see out there attempt to implement SQL-like query syntax, which is over the top for my purposes in most cases (I would just use a database at that point).

Are there any elegant tricks out there to get good performance and features with the small code overhead one would want by taking on this problem in the first place?

Solution:  Well, what is the nature of the flat databases. Are they large or small. Is it simple arrays with arrays in them? if its something simple say userprofiles built as such:

$user = array("name" => "dubayou", 
              "age" => 20,
              "websites" => array("dubayou.com","willwharton.com","codecream.com"),
              "and_one" => "more");

and to save or update the db record for that user.

$dir = "../userdata/";  //make sure to put it bellow what the server can reach.
file_put_contents($dir.$user['name'],serialize($user));

and to load the record for the user

function get_user($name){
    return unserialize(file_get_contents("../userdata/".$name));
}