unique image name for each user

Question

Imagine I'm building a blog system where a user can upload images for a blog post. I have a problem mapping the uploaded images with user and their blog post.

Here's the flow :

1. User uploaded some pictures, it's saved to the server.

2. I store the image name in the related table, means later I can retrieve images by blog's post_id.

But what if the user upload images that has the same file name?

Answer 1

Append a serial ID to every file name, such as an integer that you increment every time.

Answer 2

Add the time in the file name.

With:

time()

Answer 3

You could go for a file name that's structured like

userID_blogpostID_filename

Oh and as for the same file name problem, just do a simple check, and rename the file if a file of the same name exists.

And as manudog's answer suggested, you could add the unix time along with the filename to avoid that from happening.