What datatype should I use to store long encrypted messages on MySQL?

Question

I am working on an web application that will allow users to write messages and store them on a database to be accessed by some other users who are meant to. I have a user authentication system ready and also the encryption system works fine but I am confused about the datatype to use for storing the messages.

I am using a MySQL database with PHP to store the values encrypted using openssl AES-256 . The cipher texts produced are binary, and I need to store them on the database.

Now I can try using base64 to encode the binary strings a, but it increases the size of the data from 33 to 100%.

The messages could be long and I want my database no get screwed up with performance or storage capabilities. I also have to stick with MySQL for some reasons.

So should I use BLOB or TEXT? Which one will be more efficient in terms of performance? And also, what should be the type-like TINYTEXT, TEXT, MEDIUMTEXT, or LONGTEXT or the the corresponding types for BLOB s?

I want to make sure both faster performance and storage capabilities are fulfilled.

Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

Yes, it will be better if you can store the values in the "TEXT" data type. For more details, please read this http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/blob.html .

Regarding knowledge of storage requirements, you can read thiss one http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/storage-requirements.html .

Hope it helps.