XMLEncoder and ImageIcon

Question

I have an ImageIcon that I would like to convert to XML using XMLEncoder. I've successfully converted other types of objects, but when I try this one, I don't get the image data - just the description field. I really only care about the image data - I don't want to have to separately handle the file the image is created from if possible.
My code is below. I'm assuming that this just isn't going to work, so any alternatives are greatly appreciated. I'm not married to the ImageIcon, I can use an Image or whatever other class. My only requirements are that it be displayable in a JLabel, storable in a database, and can be sent over a network connection. Big, big plusses for being able to XMLEncode another object that contains the image. Super big plusses.
Any ideas?
Many thanks,
Scott
        XMLEncoder xenc = new XMLEncoder(System.out);
        ImageIcon img = new ImageIcon("/Users/scott/Desktop/icons/contentIcon.gif");
        while (img.getImageLoadStatus() != MediaTracker.COMPLETE) {
            try {
                Thread.sleep(500);
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
        xenc.writeObject(img);

Answer 1

I wouldn't recommend reading the image file with ImageIO and then writing it back out. And I certainly wouldn't use ByteArrayOutputStream.toString(), since it's not really character data.
You have the file object "file", so read that in first.
File file = new File(...);
byte[] imageData = new byte[(int)file.length()];
DataInputStream in = new DataInputStream(new FileInputStream(file));
in.readFully(imageData);
in.close();Then you can show that on screen simply enough...
JLabel label = new JLabel(new ImageIcon(imageData));Then to save that byte array as a string, you need to encode the bytes. Base-64 encoding is probably the best way. But it should be said that it's not recommened to use the Sun Base-64 encoder, cuz it might not be on all JVM implementations. There are 3rd-party ones you can find and substitute for it, but...
// to string...
String imageDataString = new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder().encode(imageData);
// save to the XML node
// back to bytes...
byte[] imageData = new sun.misc.BASE64Decoder().decodeBuffer(imageDataString);
// show in a label, like above