I have a camera connected to a network that provides images which can be accessed by IP. For example something like this.
http://170.1.2.3/image?camera=2
I get returned a jpg file, which I can easily display back on a webpage using normal html.
<img src="http://170.1.2.3/image?camera=2" />
But instead of simply showing the camera image as seen from the time of the page load, I also want to save this image locally to the server using an MVC4 application. In addition it would be nice to include a timestamp on the filename. I'm not having any luck finding an example that looks right to me.
Let's say I want to start with the most basic example:
string imgUrl = "http://170.1.2.3/image?camera=2";
savelocally(imgurl, "newfilename-"+DateTime.Now.ToString());
.. and savelocally() should place the file in "~/Uploads". How do I do this? All the examples I've come across have been for uploading a file from desktop. I don't know how to translate that into grabbing a remote image.
Update:
This is an incomplete answer, as pointed out by comments.
string url = "http://170.1.2.3/image?camera=2";
string localFilename = @"C:\Projects\MvcApplication1\MvcApplication1\Uploads\tofile.jpg";
using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
{
client.DownloadFile(url, localFilename);
}
It works, however I don't like the fact that the file path is an absolute one. I tried replacing localFilename with ~/Uploads/tofile.jpg but it results in an error on execution. If possible I want to avoid having a fixed location for the upload folder.
