WCF service for receiving image

Question

What is the best way to create a webservice for accepting an image. The image might be quite big and I do not want to change the default receive size for the web application. I have written one that accepts a binary image but that I feel that there has to be a better alternative.

Answer 1

Where does this image "live?" Is it accessible in the local file system or on the web? If so, I would suggest having your WebService accepting a URI (can be a URL or a local file) and opening it as a Stream, then using a StreamReader to read the contents of it.

Example (but wrap the exceptions in FaultExceptions, and add FaultContractAttributes):

using System.Drawing;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Sockets;

[OperationContract]
public void FetchImage(Uri url)
{
    // Validate url

    if (url == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException(url);
    }

    // If the service doesn't know how to resolve relative URI paths

    /*if (!uri.IsAbsoluteUri)
    {
        throw new ArgumentException("Must be absolute.", url);
    }*/

    // Download and load the image

    Image image = new Func<Bitmap>(() =>
    {
        try
        {
            using (WebClient downloader = new WebClient())
            {
                return new Bitmap(downloader.OpenRead(url));
            }
        }
        catch (ArgumentException exception)
        {
            throw new ResourceNotImageException(url, exception);
        }
        catch (WebException exception)
        {
            throw new ImageDownloadFailedException(url, exception);
        }

        // IOException and SocketException are not wrapped by WebException :(            

        catch (IOException exception)
        {
            throw new ImageDownloadFailedException(url, exception);
        }
        catch (SocketException exception)
        {
            throw new ImageDownloadFailedException(url, exception);
        }
    })();

    // Do something with image

}

Answer 2

Image is wonder.

Answer 3

Can't you upload the image to the server using FTP, then when that's done the server (and thus WCF service) van easily access it? That way you don't need to thinker with the receive size settings etc.

At least, that's how I did it.