CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpperformancescalability
something
something

Reputation: 537

Text stored in db or in files

I am doing a project (PHP) where i need to store about 4 different pieces of text about a person, each containing about 250 characters. there is currently no limit to the number times this must be done.

Would you suggest I store the 4 pieces of text in a database table and pull the text out of this, whenever a user enter the given persons page/profile, or should i rather make files out of them?

Which method would be the best in terms of speed, scalability etc.

Thanks

Upvotes: 1

Views: 77

Answers (2)

Hasteur
Hasteur

Reputation: 462

I would do this in a database. File operations are (as I recall) slower than doing a database query. The fact that you'll potentially have ~1k data for each person with a potentially unlimited amount of persons suggests that it would be better to do in a DB than as a text file. Define your table and then insert/select. The records are always gaurnteed to have consistent structure and you'll not have to worry about tripping over the delimiter character for fields.

Upvotes: 1

nico
nico

Reputation: 51680

Databases are the perfect solution for what you want to do, and PHP has plenty of functions to work with them, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel to store data in flat files.

Think, for instance, of the pain you'll have in 6 months time when you'll have to take all those files and add a column to each one of them... With a DB you'd just have to run one very simple query.

So, essentially, use a DB.

Upvotes: 4

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