You know when you open up an image in notepad or a text editor, you get a lot of random illegible text that looks like a bunch of foreign letters.

For instance, this image:

results in:

‰PNG


IHDR           szzô   gAMA  ¯È7Šé   tEXtSoftware Adobe ImageReadyqÉe<  ÉIDATxÚbüÿÿ?Ã@€ bŒŒŒD)>ÎÀ t®Ûÿc` ±4¾ ¤? ñAÛa1æ<@Œ`NA,* âx 
 ð©æ€XÇ_€ø7Cô H/Ò|€Ãç € Âë  å@j>È·   b~yy[[& b؇Ÿfx}éà ÿ;Ä1€ŽHôÇ" »§N30ôƒ|’b‰°0ÖÈHf¼ÁúïÑ#†?Ë—3Ü›5‹áÞ§O¿ ™ÌÀPˆÍ „Õ@Ëç-O`²å54xkj˜-,HJ\ÿ?~døPVÆpfï^†OG,†º ÃÀ`ïR|@BÚÎŽ»±‘‘——ìTþméR†ýýO !‰ »ÅÐ8_ò¹²•OSÂ$> “>}"ÎV4µßwì`ØßÓÃðâˆÀhš Ù
@p@Sû}& ­,*Ê ÐÝÍÀÈÍ
1AQ‘Áؘ¿§Ná·ÜÌŒANŽáìY i÷áÂï¦LaØsð (M€²«b<(í &xp@²š (ÁñÅÅ10þ*}ÿžALb9€60€ˆcà 9 éé…Ê   2¨sr2@˘½ „ì€xPVSRb`º˜}Ù€‘L(@E…=`ydÉ!^@y‡´||8!ÑS@,°TÈÙl††Wƒ ˆ%,`@[›B«WCø¡¡1t ÔûX.ü}ü˜áÏ­[_¾d …Ï ]³!ém@ ±@}*^x€®eF»wCf•þü   ñ!2 9$c£¿k×2ü®­eø}ý:Š¸_†„‚È v cŠn„ï‘ÁĉËQÅq”
¿,`ø‘˜ˆUN ì@ÓìA|€ ‚…€ ¨lgááÁî ho‡»»;ÞL€Ïràâ·0 ,ÀµÃ¨Áª«!!áçG¶åP†€`! Æß¿ãøó‡â6 Ô` @°¸ Jˆ`àk LŸÎÀ„Sš5!Lÿ"
P_ ±æ€_APð‚â˜7!"‚ ï@Ž %èßxñâ p; €˜ .:²ö+Ð÷ÿ°àÿ Ëãã1«^`œƒ0:`:‚mþ|f
ƒ"øÄÓAj\!ì
;€î¸ÄÿÐñüùÿ± 8LÍjþ!©ác@ÜĽ æÐn€ b€5J·«Ž} ÃØÙØԻ勣ªa6 2IÝ =@»`ž x] jÃÒÁ=& ¨á»wrsQÃwÅ
†ü|„‰äH/Ȩšs@³?@¢|!L    @ Á«ãÍÀ‚èˆû,LLÀʈ‹…a¨¬ïÚš5EEøSa0€CBŠ‹u|fßEÀºàû¿ 7(–A«c€ Bil€TJëùØÙì€NV&&„Áššhå:N€¦öç¿+>dx   ©;Ë$ „Ñ$[mŒÊ    1 ëvVä üú|?°!sX‚šéåhM2€ ÂÚ(]   m”òãÍXÍrsr’eù'`Á¶áêU†—_¿‚,_PŽ¥Q
@8›åË !Á]UUMP³ŒpØ;vû6Ãw` ûÙ „·c²’&@¡!ÀÅÅÅ Lr22‚‚XÕ¿Ö#wŸ<a¸
Œïß¾KX pbžŽ @ ìš-€¶áþ!uÍX
! #þ!Ud¯€–ÿ ãЊÜ52'”èšA ƒY@þáèœþ‡vN‹Ièœã@wÏ Ç}úWF,3    IEND®B`‚

I am very sorry for that :-)

Is there a way to use this wierd sequence of characters to recreate the image in php or in javascript (if you can even do that in javascript) by getting it from a mysql database?

Thanks.

EDIT: My question is: Can I say get that value of the image and put it in a database value, later to retrieve it?

And why, you might say? It is one of those things that is realy bugging me to find out, but I don't know how.

You know when you open up an image in notepad or a text editor, you get a lot of random illegible text that looks like a bunch of foreign letters.

For instance, this image:

results in:

‰PNG


IHDR           szzô   gAMA  ¯È7Šé   tEXtSoftware Adobe ImageReadyqÉe<  ÉIDATxÚbüÿÿ?Ã@€ bŒŒŒD)>ÎÀ t®Ûÿc` ±4¾ ¤? ñAÛa1æ<@Œ`NA,* âx 
 ð©æ€XÇ_€ø7Cô H/Ò|€Ãç € Âë  å@j>È·   b~yy[[& b؇Ÿfx}éà ÿ;Ä1€ŽHôÇ" »§N30ôƒ|’b‰°0ÖÈHf¼ÁúïÑ#†?Ë—3Ü›5‹áÞ§O¿ ™ÌÀPˆÍ „Õ@Ëç-O`²å54xkj˜-,HJ\ÿ?~døPVÆpfï^†OG,†º ÃÀ`ïR|@BÚÎŽ»±‘‘——ìTþméR†ýýO !‰ »ÅÐ8_ò¹²•OSÂ$> “>}"ÎV4µßwì`ØßÓÃðâˆÀhš Ù
@p@Sû}& ­,*Ê ÐÝÍÀÈÍ
1AQ‘Áؘ¿§Ná·ÜÌŒANŽáìY i÷áÂï¦LaØsð (M€²«b<(í &xp@²š (ÁñÅÅ10þ*}ÿžALb9€60€ˆcà 9 éé…Ê   2¨sr2@˘½ „ì€xPVSRb`º˜}Ù€‘L(@E…=`ydÉ!^@y‡´||8!ÑS@,°TÈÙl††Wƒ ˆ%,`@[›B«WCø¡¡1t ÔûX.ü}ü˜áÏ­[_¾d …Ï ]³!ém@ ±@}*^x€®eF»wCf•þü   ñ!2 9$c£¿k×2ü®­eø}ý:Š¸_†„‚È v cŠn„ï‘ÁĉËQÅq”
¿,`ø‘˜ˆUN ì@ÓìA|€ ‚…€ ¨lgááÁî ho‡»»;ÞL€Ïràâ·0 ,ÀµÃ¨Áª«!!áçG¶åP†€`! Æß¿ãøó‡â6 Ô` @°¸ Jˆ`àk LŸÎÀ„Sš5!Lÿ"
P_ ±æ€_APð‚â˜7!"‚ ï@Ž %èßxñâ p; €˜ .:²ö+Ð÷ÿ°àÿ Ëãã1«^`œƒ0:`:‚mþ|f
ƒ"øÄÓAj\!ì
;€î¸ÄÿÐñüùÿ± 8LÍjþ!©ác@ÜĽ æÐn€ b€5J·«Ž} ÃØÙØԻ勣ªa6 2IÝ =@»`ž x] jÃÒÁ=& ¨á»wrsQÃwÅ
†ü|„‰äH/Ȩšs@³?@¢|!L    @ Á«ãÍÀ‚èˆû,LLÀʈ‹…a¨¬ïÚš5EEøSa0€CBŠ‹u|fßEÀºàû¿ 7(–A«c€ Bil€TJëùØÙì€NV&&„Áššhå:N€¦öç¿+>dx   ©;Ë$ „Ñ$[mŒÊ    1 ëvVä üú|?°!sX‚šéåhM2€ ÂÚ(]   m”òãÍXÍrsr’eù'`Á¶áêU†—_¿‚,_PŽ¥Q
@8›åË !Á]UUMP³ŒpØ;vû6Ãw` ûÙ „·c²’&@¡!ÀÅÅÅ Lr22‚‚XÕ¿Ö#wŸ<a¸
Œïß¾KX pbžŽ @ ìš-€¶áþ!uÍX
! #þ!Ud¯€–ÿ ãЊÜ52'”èšA ƒY@þáèœþ‡vN‹Ièœã@wÏ Ç}úWF,3    IEND®B`‚

I am very sorry for that :-)

Is there a way to use this wierd sequence of characters to recreate the image in php or in javascript (if you can even do that in javascript) by getting it from a mysql database?

Thanks.

EDIT: My question is: Can I say get that value of the image and put it in a database value, later to retrieve it?

And why, you might say? It is one of those things that is realy bugging me to find out, but I don't know how.

• php
• javascript
• mysql
• image
• recreate

• Check this – Indranil Commented Dec 16, 2011 at 16:52
• Also check out this SO answer php: recreate and display an image from binary data – user895378 Commented Dec 16, 2011 at 16:54

6 Answers 6

Javascript allows pixel manipulation http://beej.us/blog/2010/02/html5s-canvas-part-ii-pixel-manipulation/

You can put images as base64 encoded data in img src attributes http://websemantics.co.uk/online_tools/image_to_data_uri_convertor/

You could easily open an image in php with file_get_contents and base64 encode it to do the same thing as that converter.

You can use imagemagick to apply runtime transformations to the image http://php/manual/en/book.imagick.php

You can use the LONGBLOB MySQL data type to store it.

With PHP, you just have to send a image header when displaying it:

header("Content-Type: image/png");
// print image contents

Yes! This is what Data URIs are for!

Yes, you can store binary data in SQL database.
For MySQL this field type is called blob, and represents non-fixed size of binary data.

Reference with some ready-to-use examples.

you can use Base64 Encoding/Decoding and store or transform the binary data as text.

In my case, I had to consume images from specific URLs. When tried to open these URLs I got a bunch of text similar to what you show here. I just placed the URL in an img tag and it worked.

<img src="URL" alt="HELLO">