title: AES-256 encryption, PHP to MySQL
body: <p>I'm attempting to use this encryption system with PHP.</p>
  
  <p>It comes with this code from the download.</p>
  
  <pre><code>$salt = 'nala321';
  $password = 'Alan';
   include('./crypt/Crypt/AES.php');
   $aes = new Crypt_AES();
   $aes-&gt;setKey('abcdefghijklmn');
  
   $size = 10 * 1024; 
  
  ***EDIT***
   $plaintext = $password.$salt;
  ***EDIT***
  
   for ($i = 0; $i &lt; $size; $i++) {
       $plaintext.= 'a';
   }
   $enc = $aes-&gt;encrypt($plaintext);
   echo $enc;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This results in a very long output. How do I go about storing this into mysql? 
  I've looked at different ideas saying to do</p>
  
  <p><em><strong>EDIT</em></strong> </p>
  
  <p>It returns characters like this </p>
  
  <pre><code>¸ÂØwÕ·›óöŽfjËëªû ÒÚCÂF I3T{öËY_Œ:4$¯Ÿ´
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><em><strong>EDIT</em></strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>VARCHAR(16) CHARSET ascii COLLATE ascii_bin
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Which is for an md5 encryption password. I'm not sure if I should put down the size to </p>
  
  <pre><code>$size = (16*16)-1; // for 255 limit on varchar
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Thanks for the comments to come!</p>