CODEWITHSUNDEEP
sql-servervb.net
Muradoz
Muradoz

Reputation: 13

Download URL images for products from excel sheet to insert them as images in SQL Server

I have an Excel sheet that contains 35,000 URL for products images. I'm looking for a way to download images from url's after that I can insert them to SQL Server as images. I have no idea about that I need to help.

Any ideas?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 435

Answers (1)

marc_s
marc_s

Reputation: 754368

I would try to do something like this in a standalone program - e.g. a command-line utility or something. I coded this in C# and for whatever reason, the online C#-to-VB.NET converters all barfed up and couldn't convert this - I hope you get the basic idea and you can do this in VB.NET yourself.

First step: get the ExcelDataReader to read Excel files.

Then do something like this:

// define list of URLs
List<string> imageUrls = new List<string>();

// open Excel file and read in the URLs into a list of strings
string filePath = @"C:\YourUrlDataFile.xlsx";  // adapt to YOUR needs!

// using a "FileStream" and the "ExcelDataReader", read all the URL's
// into a list of strings
using (FileStream stream = File.Open(filePath, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
{
    using (IExcelDataReader excelReader = ExcelReaderFactory.CreateOpenXmlReader(stream))
    {
        while (excelReader.Read())
        {
            string url = excelReader.GetString(0);
            imageUrls.Add(url);
        }

        excelReader.Close();
    }
}

// set up the necessary infrastructure for storing into SQL Server
// the query needs to be *ADAPTED* to your own situation - use *YOUR* 
// table and column name!
string query = "INSERT INTO dbo.TestImages(ImageData) VALUES(@Image);";

// get the connection string from config - again: *ADAPT* to your situation!
string connectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["YourDatabase"].ConnectionString;

// use SqlConnection and SqlCommand in using blocks
using(SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(connectionString))
using (SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand(query, conn))
{
    // add parameter to SQL query
    cmd.Parameters.Add("@Image", SqlDbType.VarBinary, -1);

    // loop through the URL's - try to fetch the image, 
    // and if successful, insert into SQL Server database
    foreach (string url in imageUrls)
    {
         try
         {
              // get a new "WebClient", and fetch the data from the URL
              WebClient client = new WebClient();
              byte[] imageData = client.DownloadData(url);

              // open connection
              conn.Open();

              // set the parameter to the data fetched from the URL
              cmd.Parameters["@Image"].Value = imageData;

              // execute SQL query - the return value is the number
              // of rows inserted - should be *1* (if successful)
              int inserted = cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();

              // close connection
              conn.Close();
          }
          catch (Exception exc)
          {
              // Log the exception
          }
     }
}

This should do pretty much what you need - of course, there are plenty of additional things you could do - read only a certain number of URL's from the Excel file, add more logging (also for success cases etc.) - but that should be the rough skeleton of this little program

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions