Two other considerations while using textual data types in MySQL are collation and character sets. Typical practices involve storing the files on file systems and maintaining references to them within the database. Just remember that integrating large blobs within your database can significantly affect performance. The actual use of BLOB types transcends beyond just storing images, extending to any kind of binary data that needs to be stored in the database. To retrieve the image back from the database you’d use: SELECT image FROM demo_blob Suppose we have an image file ‘photo.jpg’ and we want to store it in the database: INSERT INTO demo_blob (image) VALUES (LOAD_FILE('/path_to/photo.jpg')) Here’s how to create a table for binary data: CREATE TABLE demo_blob ( Use BLOBs when you need to store files directly in the database. Like TEXT, BLOB comes in four sizes: TINYBLOB, BLOB, MEDIUMBLOB, and LONGBLOB. The BLOB Data TypeīLOB stands for Binary Large Object, and it’s used to store binary data like images, multimedia files, and other byte sequences. TEXT types are also not stored with the trailing spaces. Remember that since TEXT data types do not store the text directly within the table’s row, performance might differ in comparison to VARCHAR types, especially for smaller texts. Output: 'This is a sample text that could quite possibly be much longer.' Let’s insert and retrieve a piece of text: INSERT INTO demo_text (article) VALUES ('This is a sample text that could quite possibly be much longer.') TEXT columns come in four object sizes: TINYTEXT, TEXT, MEDIUMTEXT, and LONGTEXT. This storage method is more efficient for large blocks of text. MySQL stores TEXT data outside of the table it’s associated with, referencing it with a pointer.

When you need to store large amounts of text, the TEXT data type is a suitable choice. Retrieval of the data ignores trailing spaces, showing only the text: SELECT description FROM demo_varchar īecause VARCHAR fields only use as much space as needed, they’re efficient for storing strings such as names, addresses, or any value with variable and unpredictable length. Storing a string in this case is a bit different from the CHAR: INSERT INTO demo_varchar (description) VALUES ('MySQL data type tutorial') Here’s how you would use VARCHAR: CREATE TABLE demo_varchar ( Unlike CHAR, it stores the actual length of the string plus one or two additional bytes for the length information - saving space when the data is less than the specified length. It represents variable-length character strings. If the data entries have significant variations in length, VARCHAR is the preferred data type.

Mysql text data type