Having more than one value inserted into the same column - mysql

Question

I have a webapp that I'm building. This webapp will take as input some products (cars, motos, boats, houses, etc...) and each product will have one or more photos associated with it. The id of each of photo is generated by the uniqid() function of php.
My problem is:I can't seem to fit more than two id_photos into the same column
+-----------+------------------------------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-----------+------------------------------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| carid | int(11) | NO | MUL | NULL | auto_increment |
| brand | enum('Alfa Romeo','Aston Martin','Audi') | NO | | NULL | |
| color | varchar(20) | NO | | NULL | |
| type | enum('gasoline','diesel','eletric') | YES | | NULL | |
| price | mediumint(8) unsigned | YES | | NULL | |
| mileage | mediumint(8) unsigned | YES | | NULL | |
| model | text | YES | | NULL | |
| year | year(4) | YES | | NULL | |
| id_photos | varchar(30) | YES | | NULL | |
+-----------+------------------------------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
What I would like to happen is something like this: INSERT INTO cars(id_photos) values ('id_1st_photo', 'id_2nd_photo')
Ending up having something like this:
| 60 | Audi | Yellow | diesel | 252352 | 1234112 | R8 | 1990 | id_1st_photo id_2nd_photo |
Eventually I would have to grab those photos from the folders they are in which is something like this: /var/www/website/$login/photos/id_of_photo with the query select id_photos from cars where carid=$id.
You may found some data types that is not proprelly good for the data that the server will receive but I'm one week into mysql and I'll worry about data types later on.
First of all I don't know if that is possible, if it's not how can I design something to work like that?
I have found this question that is quite the same of mine but I can't seem to implement something like this: add multiple values in one column

Answer 1

You can insert the concatenated values into a field. But it is not a good practice. You can create another table with foreign key having the id of the parent table.

Answer 2

You can easily adapt the approach in the linked question and even remove one table needed:
You first table stays almost the same, but has the id_photos column removed:
+-----------+------------------------------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-----------+------------------------------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| carid | int(11) | NO | MUL | NULL | auto_increment |
| brand | enum('Alfa Romeo','Aston Martin','Audi') | NO | | NULL | |
| color | varchar(20) | NO | | NULL | |
| type | enum('gasoline','diesel','eletric') | YES | | NULL | |
| price | mediumint(8) unsigned | YES | | NULL | |
| mileage | mediumint(8) unsigned | YES | | NULL | |
| model | text | YES | | NULL | |
| year | year(4) | YES | | NULL | |
+-----------+------------------------------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
Then you'll add a second table to store the links to the photo ids:
+-----------+------------------------------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-----------+------------------------------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| carid | int(11) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| id_photos | varchar(30) | NO | | NULL | |
+-----------+------------------------------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
Both tables are linked by the field carid (You should even make carid in the second table a foreign key pointing to the one in the first table).
Each id_photos then results in a new row in the second table.
To query the data you probably need a JOIN between both tables and maybe a GROUP BY to reduce the result to one row per carid again, but this depends on the other usecases.

Answer 3

You can insert the string formatted woth multiple photo name
INSERT INTO cars(id_photos) values ('id_1st_photo, id_2nd_photo')
In this way you don'have a well normalized database structure so you have problem when retrive the singole foto name ..
i suggest you of normalize the id_photo column in a separata table with reference to the master table and in this way store each single photo in one row