How to Display Images from a Database Using PHP: Why is My Image Showing as a Filename Instead of the Actual Picture?

How to Retrieve and Display Images from a Database using PHP

Displaying images from a database can be a crucial task for web development. This article addresses a common issue users encounter when attempting to display database-stored images, focusing on a specific issue where the image is displayed as a filename instead of the actual image data.

To resolve this issue, it's essential to use the proper methods for retrieving and displaying binary data, such as images, from a database. Traditional methods that simply echo or print the image data will not work correctly.

The provided solution demonstrates a more effective approach using PHP's mysqli library, which allows you to establish a connection to your database, execute SQL queries, and retrieve the binary data for the image.

Here's an example of how to implement this solution:

<?php
// Establish a connection to your database
$db = mysqli_connect("localhost", "root", "", "databaseName");

// Prepare and execute an SQL query to retrieve the image data
$sql = "SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE id = $id";
$result = mysqli_query($db, $sql);

// Fetch the result and extract the image data
$row = mysqli_fetch_array($result);
$imageData = $row['image'];

// Encode the image data to display it as an image
echo '<img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,'.base64_encode($imageData).'">';
?>

By using this approach, you can effectively retrieve and display images stored in a database within your PHP application.

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