Uploading files to server and storing files to disk with Spring Framework 3

Question

I need to upload files to server and that part I have successfully done, but now I need to know what is best practise to save files that are related to database items to disk with Spring and how that is actually done with Spring.

I thought it could be good way to use database table id in folder for example:

context_path/table_name/id/filename.file

Answer 1

There are three options:

• store them in the database as blobs
• store them in a folder external to the web application (and configurable in the application properties) and keep reference (in the db) to the subfolder+filename in the database
• push the items to some other storage, like a content repository, and keep reference (in the db) to the unique key of the resource

This is the case not only with spring, but with any application.

Answer 2

Your approach to save the file in a directory which has the name of the ID of the row in the database is pretty good. There is no good way to make this really 100% transaction safe (filesystems don't really understand the concept of "transaction" or "two phase commit".

Just make sure that the context_path is configurable so the data can be moved around easily.