Images not displaying properly from mysql database

Question

i am trying to use mysql database and php to display a image in a table. Every other information in my table is displaying fine except for image, i am receiving this.

����JFIF��� ( %!1!1)....383,7*-.7  +%&-----5---+--------5-----+-------------------5-/---����"����B!1A"Qa2

In my table and this goes on for awhile. in my database i have images set to a blob and no null. I am using this code to display it.

 <?php 
          include 'connect.php';
          $results = mysqli_query($con, 'select * from products');    
          ?>
            <table cellpadding="3" cellspacing ="3" border="0">
                <tr>
                    <th>Image</th>
                    <th>Name</th>
                    <th>Description</th>
                    <th>Price</th>
                    <th>Buy Product</th>
                </tr>
                <?php

                 while($products= mysqli_fetch_object($results)){
                     if($products->id<=10){?>
                <tr>
                    <td><?php echo $products->images;?></td>
                    <td><?php echo $products->name;?></td>
                    <td><?php echo $products->description;?></td>
                    <td><?php echo $products->price;?></td>
                    <td><a href="cart.php?id=<?php echo $products->id; ?
 >">Add to Cart</a></td>
                </tr>
                 <?php }} ?>    
            </table>  

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Answer 1

First I have to say that storing image data in the database can be a bad idea especially when you have a lot of images. A slightly better approach might be to store just the path to the file and link to it in your html code.

Anyway, you have a problem and there is a solution. At the moment you are just displaying the BLOB contents, which is the raw binary data of the image. To display an image, you need an <img> tag with the right source.

Something like this:

<img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,<?= base64_encode($blob) ?>"/>;

In your exact case it will look more like this:

...
<td>
   <!-- JPG image -->
   <img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,<?= base64_encode($products->images) ?>"/>;
</td>
...

Answer 2

Storing images in database is generally considered a bad idea, you should try to store the image path instead.

If you really need to do it that way, you need to use the correct tags to display them :

<td><img alt="" src="data:<?php echo $products->images;?>"></td>

For example, but please reconsider.