file_exists() is too slow in PHP. Can anyone suggest a faster alternative?

Question

When displaying images on our website, we check if the file exists with a call to file_exists(). We fall back to a dummy image if the file was missing.

Howe

Answer 1

When you save a file to a folder, if the upload was successfully, you can store the path to a DB Table.

Then you will just have to make a query to the database in order to find the path of the requested file.