I want a attribute in my Hero class to have a Portrait attribute for his/her image. What object type should I use in this case?
public class Hero
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public string HeroType { get; set; }
public int StartingHP { get; set; }
public int StartingMana { get; set; }
public Dictionary<string, string> Spells { get; set; }
public Dictionary<string, string> Items { get; set; }
}
In WPF, you should use the ImageSource class, like this:
public class Hero {
public string Name { get; set; }
public string HeroType { get; set; }
public int StartingHP { get; set; }
public int StartingMana { get; set; }
public Dictionary<string, string> Spells { get; set; }
public Dictionary<string, string> Items { get; set; }
public ImageSource Portrait { get; set; }
}
You can read an image from a file like this:
myHero.Portrait = new BitmapImage(new Uri(filePath, UriKind.Absolute));
You can use the Image class from System.Drawing.dll. For example:
public class Hero {
public string Name { get; set; }
public string HeroType { get; set; }
public int StartingHP { get; set; }
public int StartingMana { get; set; }
public Dictionary<string, string> Spells { get; set; }
public Dictionary<string, string> Items { get; set; }
public Image Portrait { get; set; }
}
To load the image, call Image.FromFile(path). If you have an image in a stream (eg, from a database or web service, you can call Image.FromStream(stream).
If you have all of the images at compile time, you can put them in a ResX file; you can get an image from the designer-generated code file like this: myHero.Portrait = SomeResXFile.Portrait1.
Beware the memory hogging some of the other answers may lead to. This is a data object right, not a UI object?
Do you know for a fact that you will always need the image for the life of the object? I would be concerned about eating up memory. It's probably better to just keep a resource identifier (file path, name in resource file, etc) and only pass that info on to image boxes. I wouldn't suggest holding on to the whole image. In winforms at least (don't know about WPF) the garbage collector isn't so hot at cleaning up images. It only sees them as a reference (i.e. an integer) because the rest of the image is basically an unmanaged object and thinks it's not a high priority for collection. Meanwhile, it could be chewing up megabytes. We got burned on a previous project of mine on that.
