images aren't saved in a database but in a storage bucket

you upload an image to your bucket and get a url in return which you save in database and use accordingly

I store them in a file system.

I save them in a storage bucket, I will just change api keys from dev env to prod

File system is not writable in serverless hosts such as vercel, so that’s one thing to keep in mind if you don’t want to learn it the hard way like https://nextjs-forum.com/post/1151080393815113728

yes you should prob use firebase or something.

For image hosting I use cloudflare r2

But any object storage service is good: s3, r2, google clould (firebase) are just some examples

take image, upload it, pass the returned url to your server in the post request where you save your todo

add a field in db called image

set it to url

and use it

you will need a new route where you will upload images

make sure to add proper auth here, this route can be abused if left open

Depending on your situation you may want a route to serve images too
The thing is that the URL you get from these services might be totally public, you can't secure them with auth
So it's common to have an API endpoint that checks auth, then download the image from cloudinary/AWS S3/whatver
So the actual URL of the image stays private

it's unsettling the first time you write something like this but most often it's actually a dozen lines of code

cause cloudinary and stuff expect to be called by a backend, not a browser

but not always it depends

having image upload/image serving go through your API allow you to control the process better

duh kill this thing

it's suffering

"Correct, you don't need to create a separate route specifically for images." depends on how you process the form those stuff are up to you

it's common to separate processing files from the rest because they are a tad specific

eg if you use JSON or GraphQL for form data it's not a good fit for files

so instead you upload to get a tmp url

then add the URL to your JSON

and make it a final URL when the data are validated

but that's up to you

I've coded it a few times

when you make all the possible mistakes you eventually learn the right approach ':)

no miracle

but there is not a single way to go just a few possible patterns, you have to pick what you need among the response provided here

you got it 👍

good news is that you are describing 90% of web apps in the world

auth, file upload are tricky parts but you'll reuse this knowledge a lot and improve over time

what did you do in the end?