How to retrieve link to an image from CakePHP to Android?

Issue

I'm fairly new with CakePHP and images so bear with me. You can assume I'm using the latest version.

I'm trying to build an Android application which can display images retrieved from the server.

Suppose I have an image in the assets folder called football.jpg. How would I store this in the database and then how would I output this to the Android application? Do I send only the link or do I send the whole image over? If it is just the link, does this mean I would have to reconnect to the server with the link and then get the image? Sorry if this doesn't make sense. Still trying to get my head around it.

Solution

Just a word of caution, it's probably better to store the file on the server's file system and store the path to the file in the database. The reason behind this is that BLOBs are stored in a different area on the file system to all your other typical data and in terms of retrieval, its not a great deal faster.

Here's a link to what I mean: Store pictures as files or in the database for a web app?

With regards to returning it to your Android app, you can send files in the response object (http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/controllers/request-response.html#cake-response-file):

public function sendFile($id) {
    $file = $this->Attachment->getFile($id);
    $this->response->file($file['path']);
    //Return reponse object to prevent controller from trying to render a view
    return $this->response;
}

This should give you finer control over what files are returned to your client.

Answered By - Sam Delaney