I'm developing a little news reader that retrieves the info from a website by doing a POST request to a URL. The response is a jSON object with the unread-news.

E.g. the last news on the App has a timeStamp of "2013-03-01". When the user refreshes the table, it POSTS "domain.com/api/api.php?newer-than=2013-03-01". The api.php script goes to the MySQL database and fetches all the news posted after 2013-03-01 and prints them json_encoded. This is

// do something to get the data in an array
echo $array_of_fetched_data;

for example the response would be [{"title": "new app is coming to the market", "text": "lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...", image: XXX}]

the App then gets the response and parses it, obtaining an NSDictionary and adds it to a Core Data db.

 NSDictionary* obtainedNews = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:responseData options:kNilOptions error:&error];

My question is: How can I add an image to the MySQL database, store it, pass it using jSON trough a POST HTTP Request and then interpret it as an UIImage.

It's clear that to store an UIImage in CoreData, they must be transform into/from NSData. How can I pass the NSData back and forth to a MySQL db using php and jSON? How should I upload the image to the db? (Serialized, as a BLOB, etc)