Question

I’m loading an image from a file, and I want to know how to validate the image before it is fully read from the file.

string filePath = 'image.jpg'; Image newImage = Image.FromFile(filePath); 

The problem occurs when image.jpg isn’t really a jpg. For example, if I create an empty text file and rename it to image.jpg, an OutOfMemory Exception will be thrown when image.jpg is loaded.

I’m looking for a function that will validate an image given a stream or a file path of the image.

Example function prototype

bool IsValidImage(string fileName); bool IsValidImage(Stream imageStream); 

Answer 1

JPEG’s don’t have a formal header definition, but they do have a small amount of metadata you can use.

• Offset 0 (Two Bytes): JPEG SOI marker (FFD8 hex)
• Offset 2 (Two Bytes): Image width in pixels
• Offset 4 (Two Bytes): Image height in pixels
• Offset 6 (Byte): Number of components (1 = grayscale, 3 = RGB)

There are a couple other things after that, but those aren’t important.

You can open the file using a binary stream, and read this initial data, and make sure that OffSet 0 is 0, and OffSet 6 is either 1,2 or 3.

That would at least give you slightly more precision.

Or you can just trap the exception and move on, but I thought you wanted a challenge 🙂