CODEWITHSUNDEEP
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Omu
Omu

Reputation: 71238

Should I check if an image file exists or have a hasImage column in the DB?

I display a lot of items, each can have a picture, when it hasn't I want to show 'nopicture.jpeg'

Should I check for each item if its jpeg (id.jpeg - i save them as id of the item + .jpeg) exists on the hard drive or have a bit column in the database for this?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 401

Answers (3)

Oded
Oded

Reputation: 499162

Chances are good that going to the disk for each image will be more expensive than getting the results for all images on a page from the database, though with the advent of very fast SSDs this may not be the case.

You will need to test, of course, but I would go with a database column at first.

Upvotes: 1

richard
richard

Reputation: 12526

Checking for it on the hard drive will be slower. I wouldn't necessarily use an actual column in the db either. Check for it in the db and return a column based on whether there is a picture or not like this:

CASE WHEN column_with_picture IS NULL THEN 0 ELSE 1 END AS has_picture_TF

Upvotes: 1

Babak Naffas
Babak Naffas

Reputation: 12571

Though it might be bad practice, why don't you make that part of your query?

SELECT ISNULL( Picture, "nopicture.jpg" ) as ItemPicture From MyTable

Once in a while, you could run a script that validates each image path in your table and removes in invalid paths.

Upvotes: 1

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