How to store a php image resource in MySQL?

[Paresh Karandikar]

I have a table that stores images. The two methods (to upload image files to the table) I have used so far (successfully) are LOAD_FILE, and fread to read the image file into a string variable. I can use both of these methods in an sql statement and the image successfully gets sent to the server.

The problem is, with these methods, I have to read the data from a file. My issue now is that I read the image file, and store it as a php image resource. Then I resample it using the GD library. The original image files are like 2-3 MB and I need to store a much lower res pic so I resample it down to like 50 KB. GD works great for that by the way.

So now I have a 50 KB php image resource, but I can't figure out how to insert it into my "insert" statement. I tried casting the image resource to a string, but no dice. The statement returns with no errors, but when I look at the data in phpmyadmin, it is not there.

I have successfully written the new php image resource to a file, then re-read the file, and stored it in MySQL that way, but it seems so un-elegant to read an image file, resample it, write it to file, then read the new file, and then store it in the DB. Surely there must be a way to push the resampled image resource straight to the database? Thanks for any help!