Dynamic loading of images in WPF

Question

I have a strange issue with WPF, I was loading images from the disk at runtime and adding them to a StackView container. However, the images were not displayed. After some

Answer 1

This is strange behavior and although I am unable to say why this is occurring, I can recommend some options.

First, an observation. If you include the image as Content in VS and copy it to the output directory, your code works. If the image is marked as None in VS and you copy it over, it doesn't work.

Solution 1: FileStream

The BitmapImage object accepts a UriSource or StreamSource as a parameter. Let's use StreamSource instead.

        FileStream stream = new FileStream("picture.png", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
        Image i = new Image();
        BitmapImage src = new BitmapImage();
        src.BeginInit();
        src.StreamSource = stream;
        src.EndInit();
        i.Source = src;
        i.Stretch = Stretch.Uniform;
        panel.Children.Add(i);

The problem: stream stays open. If you close it at the end of this method, the image will not show up. This means that the file stays write-locked on the system.

Solution 2: MemoryStream

This is basically solution 1 but you read the file into a memory stream and pass that memory stream as the argument.

        MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
        FileStream stream = new FileStream("picture.png", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
        ms.SetLength(stream.Length);
        stream.Read(ms.GetBuffer(), 0, (int)stream.Length);

        ms.Flush();
        stream.Close();

        Image i = new Image();
        BitmapImage src = new BitmapImage();
        src.BeginInit();
        src.StreamSource = ms;
        src.EndInit();
        i.Source = src;
        i.Stretch = Stretch.Uniform;
        panel.Children.Add(i);

Now you are able to modify the file on the system, if that is something you require.