Displaying Images from a Database in a GridView

Abhijit Jana

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9 Dec 2010CPOL1 min read

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A simple guide for beginners, explaining one method of displaying images taken from a database on a GridView inside an ASP.NET web page

Introduction

This is a simple web application for users who are new to ASP.NET. This will show how we can retrieve an image from a database and display it in a GridView.

Background

Sometimes we need to upload images to a web application and store it in a database, which store images in binary format. Since that can cause a loss of image quality, we can instead store the image path in the database, and retrieve that image path from it, and display the image from that location in the web page.

In order to do this, first we need to use ADO.NET to connect to the database. The database I use here is SQL Server.

In the database shown, the Profile_Picture field contains the image path. In my case, I have stored all my images in the application directory. You may change this to any other directory, like ~\myfolder\myimage.jpg.

Now our application reads images from its current directory, so if you use a different folder from the current directory, you have to set the application's current directory by calling Directory.SetCurrentDirectory, of the System.IO namespace.

We also need to set some properties in the GridView .

Perform the following actions:

Uncheck the Auto-generate field
Use two BoundFields for UserName and Country
Set the Header Text and DataField (field name in database)
Use ImageField for the image and set DataImageUrlField = ImageFieldName
Click OK

Using the code

The code required for the explanation above is very simple.

public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page 
{
    SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection();
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        conn.ConnectionString 
            = "Data Source=MyServer; Integrated Security=True; database=test";
        Load_GridData(); // call method below
    }

    void Load_GridData()
    {
        conn.Open();  // open the connection 
        SqlDataAdapter Sqa = new SqlDataAdapter("select * from picture", conn);
        DataSet ds = new DataSet();
        Sqa.Fill(ds);   // fill the dataset 
        GridView1.DataSource = ds; // give data to GridView
        GridView1.DataBind();
        conn.Close();
    }
}

Points of Interest

Using images in your web application is always interesting, and after all, they are from a database!

History

First published	7 Oct 2007
Edited	10 Dec 2010

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Written By

Abhijit Jana

Technical Lead

India

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