picture

[PaulLewis]

What type of field do you use for the picture? Since it's Access, I will assume it is OLE Object which will resolve in VB terms to a Field object of type adLongVarBinary.

IN other lanuages this would be called a BLOB (but tha't not important right now - hehe).

I have posted a method from one of my apps which does something similar to what you want. Beware that this code will not function as is - it is provided for you to get soe ideas only.

The important bits are:
1) Size an array of byte to either a specific chunk size or like in my case, directly to the size of the BLOB. (In my case I am certain that the Access DB will only contain JPG's less that 50KB)
2) retrive the chunk(s) from the BLOB and dump them to disk
3) Now treat the dumped file anyhow you like.

Function ReadDIBField(fld As ADODB.Field) As cDIBSection
  Dim picDIB As New cDIBSection
  On Error GoTo err_read
  
  Dim myvar As Variant
  Dim tmpFile As String
  Dim mSize As Long

  mSize = fld.ActualSize
  ReDim bits(mSize - 1) As Byte
  myvar = fld.GetChunk(mSize)
  bits = myvar

  If mySettings Is Nothing Then
    tmpFile = "c:\test.pic"
  Else
    tmpFile = mySettings.InternalTempFile
  End If

  'now put the file to disk and loadJPG it  
  Dim f As Long
  f = FreeFile
  ' wipe the tmp file
  On Error Resume Next
  Kill tmpFile

  On Error GoTo err_read
  Open tmpFile For Binary As #f
  Put #f, , bits
  Close #f
  ' load the file (it was a JPG in the DB)
  LoadJPG picDIB, tmpFile
  
  Set ReadDIBField = picDIB
  
  Exit Function
err_read:
  ' to make sure the cdibsection has a chance to free
  Set ReadDIBField = Nothing
End Function

I believe there is enough in there to get you started.

Regards

[HeSaidJoe]

I simply use the mdb to store the filename and description and then I store the file in the app folder and call it from there. From what I hear the storing in an mdb is quite heavy on processing. I can't say that it is any worse, I've heard it was.

[PaulLewis]

Sometimes it is more important to have the data contained in one place rather than in several places. If the files were separate from the database then several problems could occur if the images on the server were renamed / deleted / deliberately altered etc.

Furthermore, if the application ever needed to be scaled onto Oracle or SQL Server, by encapsulating the images in a field in a DB table, you are able to migrate far easier.

For most home user applications however, it would indeed be easier/faster/better (in many cases) to do as HeSaidJoe suggests.

My two cents worth

Cheers

[HeSaidJoe]

There is a lot of value in those 2 cents...

[PaulLewis]

I don't normally chit chat, but I can't help myself in this case because after I wrote "my two cents worth", I remembered that several years ago my country did away with our one and two cent coins.

So nowadays, it should be "my five cents worth".

But if I ponder too long on the origin of the phrase, I might wonder whether it was originally "two bits worth" which funnily enough has some bearing in the programming world as well

Ahh, the ravings of an idle mind...