How to Save Remote Images to a Database Using PHP

M66 2025-06-22

How to Fetch and Store Remote Images in a Database Using PHP

In modern web development, there are many scenarios where you need to download an image from a remote URL and store it in a database. This article walks you through the process of accomplishing this in PHP, complete with code samples.

Step 1: Fetch the Remote Image

You can use PHP’s built-in file_get_contents() function to download image data from a remote server. Here's a basic example:


$remoteImageURL = 'https://example.com/image.jpg'; // The remote image URL

// Get the image content
$imageContent = file_get_contents($remoteImageURL);

if ($imageContent === false) {
    echo 'Unable to fetch the remote image';
    exit;
}

This script tries to fetch the image data from the specified URL. If the operation fails, it exits with an error message.

Step 2: Create a Database Table for Storing the Image

Before storing the image, you need to set up a database table to hold the image content. Below is a sample SQL statement:


CREATE TABLE `images` (
    `id` INT AUTO_INCREMENT,
    `content` LONGTEXT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
);

The content field in this table is designed to store the image data as text.

Step 3: Save the Image Content to the Database

Once the image data is fetched, the next step is to insert it into the database. Here's the PHP code that handles the database connection and data insertion:


$dbHost = 'localhost';    // Database host
$dbUsername = 'root';     // Database username
$dbPassword = 'password'; // Database password
$dbName = 'database';     // Database name

// Connect to the database
$conn = new mysqli($dbHost, $dbUsername, $dbPassword, $dbName);

if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die('Database connection failed: ' . $conn->connect_error);
}

// Insert image content into the database
$sql = 'INSERT INTO images (content) VALUES (?)';
$stmt = $conn->prepare($sql);
$stmt->bind_param('s', $imageContent);
$stmt->execute();

if ($stmt->affected_rows > 0) {
    echo 'Image saved successfully!';
} else {
    echo 'Failed to save the image!';
}

$stmt->close();
$conn->close();

This script securely saves the image content to the database using prepared statements, helping to prevent SQL injection and ensure safe execution.

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve covered a complete method for saving remote images to a database using PHP. The process includes:

Retrieving the image with file_get_contents()
Creating a suitable table structure in your database
Inserting the image data using a MySQLi prepared statement

This method works well for small-scale applications or temporary image storage. For large-scale image handling, consider saving the image file to the server and storing only the file path in the database to improve performance and scalability.

file_get_contents