Question

I’m using ASP.NET MVC and have a model which has an image (byte array) in one of the fields. I’m trying to output this image into the src attribute of the img tag. I’m looking to do something like <img src='<%= Model.VenueImage %>'>. How can I do this?

Answer 1

Maybe Inline Images with Data URLs idea?

Inline images use the data URI scheme
to embed images directly within web
pages. As defined by RFC 2397, data
URIs are designed to embed small data
items as “immediate” data, as if they
were referenced externally. Using
inline images saves HTTP requests over
externally referenced objects.

System.Drawing.Image image = GetImageFromSomewhere(...);

byte[] imageData = ImageToByteArray(image);
string imageBase64 = Convert.ToBase64String(imageData);
string imageSrc = string.Format("data:image/gif;base64,{0}", imageBase64);

and then somewhere in the page:

<img src= "<%= ImageSrcBytes %>" />

AFAIK this will work for Opera 7.2+, Firefox, Safari, Netscape, Mozilla and IE8+ (IE8 up to 32kb).

For earlier version of IE there is a workaround – MHTML.

The example how to do it is here.