How to pass a URI image path to FileInfo class?

Question

I have the below program that converts an image to byte array

public byte[] ReadImageFile(string imageLocation)
        {
            byte[] imageData = null;
            FileInfo fileInfo = new FileInfo(imageLocation);
            long imageFileLength = fileInfo.Length;
            FileStream fs = new FileStream(imageLocation, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
            BinaryReader br = new BinaryReader(fs);
            imageData = br.ReadBytes((int)imageFileLength);
            return imageData;
        }

If I pass the value as "D:\\ENSource\\1.png", it works properly.

But If I send the value as "https://i.stack.imgur.com/PShuQ.png" it throws exception

URI formats are not supported

How can I achieve this?

Use e.g. the `WebClient` class to download the image from an URI location. — Uwe Keim, May 26 '15 at 03:44
You can't. **URI formats are not supported.** If you want to load an image over the internet, have a look [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16091997/best-way-image-url-to-drawing-image?lq=1) — Blorgbeard, May 26 '15 at 03:45

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

5

FileInfo and FileStream work with local files, there is no way to "pass Uri" to either of them.

To handle Uri you can either:

map server to local drive (i.e. if server supports WebDAV).
use Http related classes (like HttpClient, WebClient) to download file from server and get bytes. I.e. Image to byte array from a url.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

Community

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answered May 26 '15 at 03:44

Alexei Levenkov

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thanks Alexei... var webClient = new WebClient(); byte[] imageBytes = webClient.DownloadData("http://i.stack.imgur.com/PShuQ.png"); – priyanka.sarkar May 26 '15 at 03:48

JFish222 · Answer 2 · 2015-05-26T03:50:11.313

Edit! Please see @Alexei's response. He tossed in a much better (read: simpler) solution that uses webclient. I'm leaving the response here in case someone wants to see a more "verbose" example of querying a web server.

I just gave Alexei an up tick (he's quite right), but just to fill this in . . .

Your communicating with a web server, not a file system. As a result, you will need to "request" the data from the server manually, and then pass the resulting stream.

Please see the following code snippet . . . http://www.digitalcoding.com/Code-Snippets/C-Sharp/C-Code-Snippet-Download-Image-from-URL.html

How to pass a URI image path to FileInfo class?

2 Answers2