Save files (pictures, music, movies) in a Container file.

Question

I am currently learning C# during my studies and I am writing a small movie database application in it. I know its not good to save pictures (etc) inside the database, especially when adding movie covers that are rather big. But I don't want the files to just get saved in a folder as this creates a mess if more and more movies are added to the list.

Does anyone know a way to store the files in some sort of a container file (like covers.xxx). Then that container contains all covers in one big file, the files can then be retrieved with an address or the name.

Thanks :)

Answer 1

I can't see why storing the files as binary in the db is necessarily a bad idea.

However if it's definitely out then it sounds like you want a way to store a non-compressed compilation of files - basically a .zip that isn't compressed. You could achieve this for yourself by creating a file that is simply the data of the files you want appended together with some sort of unique header string in between them that you can split on when you read from the file. Ultimately this is simulating a basic file DB so I'm not sure what you'd accomplish but it's an idea.

Answer 2

http://dotnetzip.codeplex.com/

Use above library and following code snippet.

 using (ZipFile zip = new ZipFile())
 {
     // add this map file into the "images" directory in the zip archive
     zip.AddFile("c:\\images\\personal\\7440-N49th.png", "images");
     // add the report into a different directory in the archive
     zip.AddFile("c:\\Reports\\2008-Regional-Sales-Report.pdf", "files");
     zip.AddFile("ReadMe.txt");
     zip.Save("MyZipFile.zip");
 }