Getting Image From Byte Array In Json Object To Android App

Heres my situation: I have a RESTful WCF service running on my server, the service is meant to get various types of data about people from a database and makes that data available

Solution 1:

1. Base64 encode the byte array to get a string.
2. Add the string to JSON object and send it.
3. When JSON is received, get out the string.
4. Base64 decode it to get back the byte array.
5. Use byte array to create Image.

Solution 2:

See this question on storing images, it's always better to store this sort of data on file system. If possible deprecate that field, and create a script to move existing images to file system.

You should then store the images on a file system (or some sort of content management system) which can be retrieved by a URL.

Then store the URL in the database. you can then send this in your json object.

{
...
    image_url:<url from database>
...
}

When the client receives this it will make a call to that URL and download the image.

Your client will have to make a separate call to retrieve the image but it's generally better than filling your database with binary data. This can also work to your advantage if you want to display data fast while allowing the image to be downloaded in the background.

Solution 3:

Better than using Base64 encoding is this way of returning Stream (from WCF RAW programming)

[OperationContract, WebGet]
public Stream GetTestImage(Image image)
{
    MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();
    image.Save(stream, System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Jpeg);
    stream.Position = 0;
    WebOperationContext.Current.OutgoingResponse.ContentType = "image/jpeg";
    return stream;
}