MySql Audio Library

Question

I'm coding in ASP.NET and want to store audio files (.mp3, or smaller formats) in a MySQL database; which, I can then retrieve based on certain conditions. Is this possible? Are there any preferred methods to having Audio files on your web pages (besides embedding them in the HTML).

Answer 1

Most solutions that store files in a database do not scale well, but you can certain store audio files, or any other type of file, as a blob (binary large object) in MySQL. You can create an ashx handler that performs the retrieval from the database and writes the content to the ASP.NET output stream as raw binary data. You can then create links that point to the ASHX handler and perform any query logic you want in there based on URL parameters.

Answer 2

If you are using a MySQL database, it seems to do well (at least in my experience) with blobs. It takes a relatively short time to load the MP3 and if you tune your database for audio, you can probably even get better performance (I pretty much use default settings).

One thing to remember is that you define the MIME-type so that users know what they are getting when they click a link to access your MP3.

Again, all of this is my own experience. YMMV.

Answer 3

I prefer to store large files outside of the database, unless there is some overwhelming need to keep everything there.

You could store the location of the file in the database and have the files outside of the webapp directory, so they can't be accessed directly.

Then, in the url for playing the music you can just have a cgi program that will just send that data to the browser, with the correct mime type.