Re: Storing site Links: PHP vs. MySQL

[Nick Roper]

Hi Tyler,

I guess it depends on a number of factors, such as:

1) What sort of load is the mysql server under
2) How will the links be maintained
3) What else, if anything, will the URLs be used for
4) How many links are there
5) How frequently will links be added/deleted/edited
etc...

Storing the links in a text file may give you faster access, but make it less easy to select a subset - say all the links that are to be used on a certain page. Storing then in MySQL will probably give you a more versatile repository, but comes with an overhead in that you need to connect/query/fetch/process each time rather than just reading a file. You should be able to secure either method satisfactorily, but if you go for the file method then I'd suggest keeping the file outside the wenserver's root directory.

Regards,

Nick

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Nick Roper