Image to Base64

I recently wanted to add small icon images to a project and i wonderd if there wasnt a beter solotion to storing small icon images inside a data base for quick retrieval.

So i found a solution to convert a image to base64 on www.dailycoding.com I took the code from www.dailycoding.com and add a few of my code just make more sense of whats going on.

There are two methods ImageToBase64 and Base64ToImage i will only be using ImageToBase64 and I think the description comes with the name.

In the Page_Load event I made use of two properties (Base64Image and Base64Start) to build the image for display there has to be "data:image/gif;base64," in front of the base64 string to display it as an image and this is stored in the Base64Start. lastly I displayed the image and text

The only downside to base64 is that it makes the files increasingly larger than binary format but it is easier/safer to Send file data. For example if you want to send file to another server using a web service or ftp base64 will be beater because it is less likely that data will be lost

public partial class WebForm1 : System.Web.UI.Page
    {
        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            //create image from full path
            System.Drawing.Image image = System.Drawing.Image.FromFile(Server.MapPath("list.gif"));

            //Create base64 and store in property
            Base64Image = ImageToBase64(image, System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Gif);

            //Display image and string
            imgMyImage1.ImageUrl = String.Format("{0}{1}", Base64Start, Base64Image);
            lblBase64Text.Text = Base64Image;
        }

        public string ImageToBase64(System.Drawing.Image image,
            System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat format)
        {
            using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
            {
                // Convert Image to byte[]
                image.Save(ms, format);
                byte[] imageBytes = ms.ToArray();

                // Convert byte[] to Base64 String
                string base64String = Convert.ToBase64String(imageBytes);
                return base64String;
            }
        }

        public System.Drawing.Image Base64ToImage(string base64String)
        {
            // Convert Base64 String to byte[]
            byte[] imageBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(base64String);
            MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(imageBytes, 0,
              imageBytes.Length);

            // Convert byte[] to Image
            ms.Write(imageBytes, 0, imageBytes.Length);
            System.Drawing.Image image = System.Drawing.Image.FromStream(ms, true);
            return image;
        }

        private String base64Image;
        public String Base64Image
        {
            get 
            {
                return base64Image;
            }
            set 
            {
                base64Image = value;
            }
        }

        public String Base64Start
        {
            get 
            { 
                return "data:image/gif;base64,";
            }
        }
    }


    

The output will be displayed as following

Base64 displayed as Image :



Base64 displayed as full text :

R0lGODlhDgAOAPAAAFRWVPz+/CwAAAAADgAOAAACFoyPqcttAF2AQFJ5rtONJ7+AioiVRwEAOw==

Source Code