images?

It is not clear from your post if you want to store the binary image data in the database or references to files on the server.

That's probably cause I'm not sure either :P However, I'm thinking references to the file would work for what I want to do?

Well, in that case you have to
- upload the image file to the server (probably a temp directory),
- move it to a location where the webserver can serve it,
- store the path of that location in the database,
- include the image file path in an image tag in your PHP generated HTML code.
Which part is it that gives you headaches?
Apart from that I found it always quite handy to store binary image data in the database and serve them directly from there. That way you do not have to worry about file paths and replication etc.

I've never done it before so I'm just kinda stuck on where to start I suppose. Basically what sort of data type to use for the image in the table, I'm having a real n00b moment at the moment. It was kinda of a whim that had me wanting to add images and I just found I have no idea how to start. Right now I'm returning a title and transforming it to a hyperlink.

<td><a href=\"http://localhost/Catalogue/php/details.php?q=". $title . "\">$title</a></td>

But I found a coverflow javascript which is set up like so.

<div id="gallery">
    <a href="http://localhost/test.html"><img src="http://appleadayproject.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/apple-full2.jpg"></a>
	<a href="http://localhost/test.html"><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/cs-vancouversun/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/greenman/3073.apple.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0TTXDM86AJ1CB68A7P02&Expires=1308000802&Signature=li9Ta3GakrNzVJry4Uy7bebEJT0%3d"</a>
	<script>
    Galleria.loadTheme('galleria/themes/classic/galleria.classic.min.js');
	 $("#gallery").galleria({
        width: 500,
        height: 500
    });
</script>

And I thought it'd be neat if the $title above was like $image and my query returned the url for use in the img src tag.

Now my problem is I have no idea how to do this. I mean, lets say I store all my images in http://localhost/Catalogue/images/bookCovers

cause that will probably be my directory. So I throw all the images I want in there.

What I need to do is be able to allow the user to browse through that directory when adding a new book to the library database and then store that file name in table. Yeah, file name will work. So I guess I can just put the image column as a varchar.

okay yeah, that works in my head, cause then I can just return the file names and create the urls in the search...

OKAY! So, what I don't know how to do is the browse bit, which would be php yes?

Yes. PHP has a dir() pseudoclass (and some newer stuff) which allows you to read a directory. Gather all file names in an array, sort them and display them in a directory tree. And if you use any framework, there must be tons of ready-made components for that purpose.

dyingatmidnight,

This little how to might be useful for you.