[Forum FAQ] How to display an image from Http response in Reporting Services?

Question

Question:
There is a kind of scenario that users want to display an image which is from URL. In Reporting Services, if the URL points to an image file, we can directly display it by typing the URL in embedded image. However, some URLs are just sending Http requests
to server side, then redirect to another position and the server will return the image. For these kind of URLs, Reporting Services can’t directly render the image from Http response.
Answer:
To achieve this goal, we can add custom code into the report. Pass the URL as argument into our custom function so that we can create HttpRequest and get the HttpResponse. Then we can use custom function to return the Bytes() from the HttpResponse and render
it into an image in report.
Ps: In Reporting Services, it only support drawing Bytes() array into image, so we need to have our custom function return Bytes array.
Add the assembly and custom code into the report.
Public shared Function GetImageFromByte(Byval URL as String) As byte() 
                Dim photo as System.Drawing.Image 
         Dim Request As System.Net.HttpWebRequest 
       Dim Response As System.Net.HttpWebResponse 
              Request = System.Net.WebRequest.Create(URL)         
                 Response = CType(Request.GetResponse, System.Net.WebResponse) 
             If Request.HaveResponse Then  
                  If Response.StatusCode = Net.HttpStatusCode.OK Then                    
                       photo = System.Drawing.Image.FromStream(Response.GetResponseStream) 
                 End If 
             End If 
              Dim ms AS System.IO.MemoryStream = new System.IO.MemoryStream() 
             photo.Save(ms, System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Jpeg) 
                Dim imagedata as byte()  
                imagedata = ms.GetBuffer()  
                return imagedata
End Function
Grant the permission for assemblies. 
Go to: 
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\RSpreviewPolicy.config 
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\Reporting Services\ReportServer\rssrvpolicy.config
Give “FullTrust” for Report_Expressions_Default_Permissions.
Insert an image into report. 
Expression:
=Code.GetImageFromByte("https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSrVwPoAtlcA2A3KaiAJi-XjS4icr1QUnKYr7uzpX3IL3g2GPisAQ")
The Result looks below:
Applies to:
Reporting Services 2005
Reporting Services 2008
Reporting Services 2008 R2
Reporting Services 2012
Reporting Services 2014
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Answer 1

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Hi, I'd like to display a dynamic image from the web inside a JLabel or any other swing component it could work in. I've been looking on the Swing tutorials and others forums, all I can have is that a JLabel can load an Icon object, defined by an image URL, but can this URL be like "http://xxxxx/image.jpg" somehow or can it only be a local image URL?>
I do not know why you start talking about an image on the web then go on to show concerns about whether it will work for a 'local' URL.
But perhaps this answer will cover the possibilities.
So long as you can from an URL to the image, and the bytes are available for download (e.g. some web sites wrap a direct call to an image in HTML that embeds the image), the URL based icon constructors will successfully load it.
It does not matter if that URL points to
- a web site,
- a local server ('localhost'),
- an URL representation of a File on the local file system, or
- it is inside a Jar file that is on the application's run-time classpath.
How you go about forming a valid URL to a 'local resources' (or indeed what you regard as local resources) is another matter, depending on the form of the project, and how the resources are stored (see list above).
Probably the main reason that examples use images at a hard coded URL on the net is that it makes an 'image example' self contained. As soon as we compile and run it, we can see the result. I have posted a few examples like that on these forums.
Edit 1:
BTW - Welcome to the Sun forums
Edited by: AndrewThompson64 on Apr 21, 2009 12:15 PM