Hi Robin!
Our SQL query analyzer system can tell you what columns are aliased and much much more, so this shouldn't be a problem.
I think the column name should not be used to define what type of transform is used, as that restricts the user a lot. Instead just base the transform off the specified mimetype.
Then I don't get the clue of how you want to add the mime-types. In your first mail I thought you want to use the column comments table for storing it. The column comments references the comments by the column name, currently like this:
db_name.table_name.column_name:comment
There I would just add new fields: mimetype, parameters.
On the browsepage I would use a function which gets all fields mimetype and parameters from the comments-database. In every field I would the check the mimetype of the column using an association by the column name.
Which means exactly, I have an array like this:
$transformation_map = array('id' => 'text/plain', 'image' => 'image/jpg_inline', 'image2' => 'image/jpg');
And after that, inside the loop for displaying the rows' values I query my array via $transformation_map[$pointer] -- if there is an entry, to the transformation stuff, otherwise use the standard htmlspecialchars()-Function.
What was your approach, could you please specify?
Oh, and once you write up the code for putting the mime-type in, I'll contribute a little bit of code that can auto-detect what mime-type a data field should be if there is data in the field but no mime-type specified. It's just a little bit of code I have kicking around my personal archives that I wouldn't mind putting to better use.
That'll be great. :-)
Regards, Garvin.