User Directory Structure

Question

User777071773 posted

Hi,

I'm building a site that can possibly have millions of users (yes ambitious!).  Each user can upload an image or two for his/her profile.  How would you architect the directories to support this type of thing?  I was thinking of having a users subfolder off the root dir where each user will have their own sub-dir that corresponds to their userId created at registration time.  I could then upload their profile pics to their corresponding sub-directory under the users dir.  Seems straightforward but am I missing anything?  Can I have a million sub-dirs under the user dir?  NTFS supports it so my guess is YES.  Please advise.

TIA,

Viz

Answer 1

User-389939489 posted

NTFS supports it but, when you get past the thousand items in a folder, things start slowing down dramatically: this is because the item lookup is a linear search across the items list.

So, in order to keep those images on the file system, you'd need a less flat hierarchy. In your case, that might look like:

-- root

-- -- group_1 (ids from 1 to 1000)

-- -- -- user_1

-- -- -- user_2

-- -- -- ...

-- -- -- user_1000

-- -- group_2 (ids from 1001 to 2000)

etc.

That said, and from what I can understand of your requirements: IMO yours is the perfect case for storing those images into a database table instead. It's technically trivial, simpler than storing on the file system; OTOH, from a conceptual standpoint, there seems to be no point in seeing those images out of the context of a user profile.

HTH,

-LV

Answer 2

User-345079421 posted

The best practice here to build one folder lets say (Gallery), the build a table that will contain (GalleryID, UserID, imagedesc).

then save the uploaded image with GalleryID. so u can link the image with its info in the DB.

Regards,

Moayad Faris