Convert Raw Binary String to InputStream

Question

Hi i want to upload a {color:#003366}JPG image file{color} in a {color:#003366}BLOB{color} field in database. At first i was using {color:#003366}AJA{color}X to send file {color:#003366}path{color} to the {color:#003366}servlet{color} creating a {color:#003366}file Object{color} from it, then {color:#003366}FileInputStream{color} from it, and finally passing it to {color:#003366}preparedstatement.setBinaryStream({color}) method. It worked great. But since{color:#003366} Firefox 3{color} stopped sending full path to database i have to use another method.
So instead of sending image path i used {color:#ff0000}nsIDOMFile{color} property of Firefox 3. It has a method {color:#003366}getAsBinary(){color} which Returns a DOMString containing the file's data in {color:#003366}raw binary{color} format. Now i access this {color:#003366}string{color} from servlet using{color:#003366} request.getParameter(){color} method which creates a {color:#003366}String containing bit code of the image file{color} (I suppose). Now how to convert this string to {color:#003366}InputStream{color} so that i can store this in BLOB field in database using prepared statement.
Right now I am using following code but it doesn't seem to work.
String image=request.getParameter("image");
    try{
      InitialContext context = new InitialContext();
      dsource = (DataSource)context.lookup("java:comp/env/jdbc/DataSource");
      con = dsource.getConnection();
      ps = con.prepareStatement("SOME STATEMENT");
      ByteArrayInputStream imagestream = new ByteArrayInputStream(image.getBytes());
      ps.setBinaryStream(1, imagestream, imagestream.available());
      int i = ps.executeUpdate();Edited by: Wonder01 on Oct 22, 2008 12:24 PM

Answer 1

Yeah i came across that too. But these show either iframes hack method (which really isn't ajax) or else writing large pieces of code just to generate the binary stream of the file, then manually creating multipart/form-data request were the only options until Firefox 3 introduced nsIDOMFile. See this and read first few lines (you'll understand what i mean). So i send request in the form of a parameter containing Raw Binary format of the file
Now going over to the servlet side i need to somehow accept this parameter and insert in database. First i need to know how should i receive this on servlet (By using request.getParameter() or some other method). And secondly, how to convert that to either a byte array or InputStream. I searched for it and think this might be useful. This page shows 1.) how to convert an array of raw binary data into an array of ASCII 0 and 1 characters and 2.) how to convert a String to byte array where each char of the String represents an ASCII '0' or '1'. But what i nedd is slightly different, I need to convert a String containing Raw Binary into byte array.
And thanks for the information on the file paths. It was really helpful