Picture Viewer Question

[CoachBarker]

I started redesigning a picture viewer (of my grandchildren) after someone had asked a question about loading images. So I could distribute this app to friends and relatives I decided the best way to do it was to include a folder to be installed on their C: This way I could update the folder of pictures at anytime without changing the application. Right now I select either individual names or all the pictures from a combo box like this:

Private Sub cboSelectPicture_SelectedIndexChanged(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles cboSelectPicture.SelectedIndexChanged
      Me.Refresh()
      Try
          Dim selectedName As String = Me.cboSelectPicture.Text
          ' Get and display pictures of only grandchild selected
          If selectedName <> "All Grandchildren" Then
              Dim imageFiles As String() = IO.Directory.GetFiles("C:\Pictures\", selectedName & "*.jpg")
              Dim images As New ArrayList
              For Each imageFile As String In imageFiles
                    Select Case IO.Path.GetExtension(imageFile).ToLower()
                        Case ".jpg", ".bmp", ".gif", ".png"
                            images.Add(Image.FromFile(imageFile))
                    End Select
              Next imageFile
              Me.images = DirectCast(images.ToArray(GetType(Image)), Image())
          ElseIf selectedName = "All Grandchildren" Then
              ' Get and display pictures of all grandchildren 
              Dim imageFiles As String() = IO.Directory.GetFiles("C:\Pictures\", "*.jpg")
              Dim images As New ArrayList
              For Each imageFile As String In imageFiles
                  Select Case IO.Path.GetExtension(imageFile).ToLower()
                      Case ".jpg", ".bmp", ".gif", ".png"
                            images.Add(Image.FromFile(imageFile))
                  End Select
              Next imageFile
              Me.images = DirectCast(images.ToArray(GetType(Image)), Image())
          End If
      Catch ex As Exception
          MessageBox.Show("cboSelectPicture_SelectedIndexChanged: " & ex.ToString)
      End Try
End Sub

Is there a more effective way of doing this or is this as good as it gets?

[Deepak Sakpal]

It will be better if you don't hardcode anything like "All Grandchildren" or "C:\Pictures\". If you are planning to distribute this application then your friends may not be having Grandchildren or may not be having C drive in the hard disk.

[VBDT]

1. It would be better if you use List(Of Image) type instead of ArrayList (no casting would be needed)
2. Also use My.Computer.FileSystem.SpecialDirectories.Desktop & "Image\" & imageName (where "Image" is the folder)
3. Also, I would shorten the code since most of them in the If statement are the same.

[VBDT]

I can’t figure out why you use Case statement since you only request .jpg files. Am I missing something?

[CoachBarker]

Deepak. All Grandchildren comes from a text file in the pictures folder. It also contains all the names of the grandchildren, this way the list can be added to and the combo box will add the new names. Remember these are pictures of my grandchildren. I originally had the pictures in separate folders for each child, and could fill the combo box with the folder names, but could not incorporate "All Grandchildren" into the datasource for the combo box.

VBDT. I got this code from searching the forum, and it was one of the xamples I came up with. I have a sample with List(Of Image), I will try that instead. The select case was in the original code, I guess I can remove it since I only plan on using jpgs.

Thanks for your comments.