# Solved: phpMyAdmin - Browser transformation



## JiminSA (Dec 15, 2011)

I noticed this tag for the first time today and was wondering how it can be utilised or more specifically can it be used in an image upload function, literally to hold the image?
Is it possible to hold an image in a cell? (as opposed to a url link to an image)
If anyone has any insight into this I'd appreciate some advice...


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## allnodcoms (Jun 30, 2007)

Morning James,

Yup, you can hold an image in a cell - you can hold what you like in fact. Check out the BLOB data type, it stands for 'Binary Large OBject' and simply holds a string of binary data. As that data is not interpreted in any way, it could contain image data, sound data, a word file... Sky's the limit!

Advice? Don't do it... It may sound like a really cool thing to do, but when your PHP page is sitting there, holding on to this image data in the associative array you got back from your query, what do you do with it? HTML can't use raw binary image data, it needs URLs, so to use this data you'd have to write it out to file. Kind of defeats the object...

Danny


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## JiminSA (Dec 15, 2011)

Thanks Danny that's what I needed to know - as usual your nail-hitting marksmanship is right-on target!


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