Question

I have an ImageHandler class that I am using to retrieve photos from an active directory. However I want to display a default image in the event that one cannot be retrieved. I tried using return Bitmap.FromFile ( "~/images/default_person.jpg" ); however it appears as though that is looking for a file system path.

I would like to specify an image that is located in my solution in the folder “images” without hardcoding a system path into the code.

Here is the piece of code that is getting the image:

static Image GetUserPicture ( string userName )
    {
        DirectoryEntry myLdapConnection = SCDirectoryEntry.GetDirectoryEntry ( );

        using ( DirectorySearcher dsSearcher = new DirectorySearcher ( myLdapConnection ) )
        {

            dsSearcher.Filter = String.Format ( "(SAMAccountName={0})", userName );

            SearchResult result = dsSearcher.FindOne ( );
            DirectoryEntry user = result.GetDirectoryEntry ( );

                byte [ ] data = user.Properties [ "jpegPhoto" ].Value as byte [ ];

                if ( data != null )
                {

                        var s = new MemoryStream ( data );

                        return Bitmap.FromStream ( s );

                }

            //return default image here    
            return Bitmap.FromFile ( "~/images/default_person.jpg" );


        }
    }

Answer 1

You can use Server.MapPath( "~/images/default_person.jpg" );

Server.MapPath will convert this relative path into physical path as describe here, in MSDN page.