Want advise on saving images in sqlite3 on ios - iphone

Question

I am developing an app for iOS that uses SQLite3 database now i want to save some images in it, i have searched on net that people tells that it is not good idea to save images in SQLite3 like this one
Blob Data Type?
I am totally confuse that what to do so i am painting my whole situation in front of you please advice me what to do
i want to store 79 images in my SQLite database most of them are 2kb in size and very few are 20 to 25 kb totally all the images takes 384kb on disk so is it advisable to store all the images in my database or only use links in my database and filesystem for images
Please advise me as soon as possible

Answer 1

In my opinion Save imagePath in SQLite, and save image in your document directory. I do the same. May be this help you.
-(void)saveDataToDatabase:(NSString *)fileNameToSave
{
NSString *docsDir;
NSArray *dirPaths;
dirPaths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
docsDir = [dirPaths objectAtIndex:0];
sqlite3_stmt *statement;
NSString *databasePath = [[NSString alloc]
initWithString: [docsDir stringByAppendingPathComponent:
#"scanner.db"]];
NSLog(#"%#",databasePath);
const char *dbpath = [databasePath UTF8String];
if (sqlite3_open(dbpath, &databaseHandle) == SQLITE_OK)
{
NSString *insertSQL = [NSString stringWithFormat: #"Insert into IMAGEINFO (NAME,IMAGEPATH) values ('%#','%#')",#"imageFirst",fileNameToSave];
const char *insert_stmt = [insertSQL UTF8String];
sqlite3_prepare_v2(databaseHandle, insert_stmt, -1, &statement, NULL);
if (sqlite3_step(statement) == SQLITE_DONE)
{
[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setBool:YES forKey:#"database"];
}
else
{
}
}
}
-(void)saveImage:(NSString *)fileName:(UIImage *)imageToSave
{
NSError *error;
NSString *fileNaToSave = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"Documents/%#.png",fileName];
NSString *pngPath = [NSHomeDirectory() stringByAppendingPathComponent:fileNaToSave];
// Write image to PNG
[UIImagePNGRepresentation(imageToSave) writeToFile:pngPath atomically:YES];
// Let's check to see if files were successfully written...
// You can try this when debugging on-device
// Create file manager
NSFileManager *fileMgr = [NSFileManager defaultManager];
// Point to Document directory
NSString *documentsDirectory = [NSHomeDirectory() stringByAppendingPathComponent:#"Documents"];
// Write out the contents of home directory to console
NSLog(#"Documents directory: %#", [fileMgr contentsOfDirectoryAtPath:documentsDirectory error:&error]);
}

Answer 2

Well, i wont recommend to store images in the DB. The main reason is that can cause your db crash(i wont say always but, there are situations i really seen the db crash due to storing the images).
The very best way to cache your images is to save the images in to your documents directory. That's safe and Robust. Happy Coding. :-)

Answer 3

I agree that storing large blobs in a database can lead to performance issues for websites and other applications that have a lot of users. Database resources are wasted on long operations that could be handled by the file system or other servers.
However, with an iPhone app, you don't need to worry about database resource being wasted on blobs. Your app will only have 1 user accessing the database so it will be just as responsive if the images come from the file system or SQLite.