displaying image from db in Razor/MVC3

Question

I have a table in the db, which has the following :- CountryID, CountryName, and CountryImage.

Now I am trying to display the image in the index and I have the following in the View :-

        <td>
        @if (item.Image != null)
        {
            <img src="@Model.GetImage(item.Image)" alt="@item.CountryName"/>    
        }

and then in the ViewModel I have :-

        public FileContentResult GetImage(byte[] image)
    {
        if (image != null)
            return new FileContentResult(image, "image/jpeg");
        else
        {
            return null;
        }
    }

However I cannot see the image properly.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance for your help and time

UPDATE

Ok So I have implemented the following in the View :-

        <td>
        @if (item.Image != null)
        {
            <img src="@Url.Action("GetImage", "CountryController", new { id = item.CountryID })" alt="@item.CountryName" />             
        }
    </td>

and in the CountryController :-

        public ActionResult GetImage(int id)
    {
        var firstOrDefault = db.Countries.Where(c => c.CountryID == id).FirstOrDefault();
        if (firstOrDefault != null)
        {
            byte[] image = firstOrDefault.Image;
            return File(image, "image/jpg");
        }
        else
        {
            return null;
        }
    }

but when I try to debug the code, the ActionResult GetImage is not being hit

Answer 1

Two possibilities.

Write a controller action instead which given an image id will return this image:

public ActionResult GetImage(int id)
{
    byte[] image = ... go and fetch the image buffer from the database given the id
    return File(image, "image/jpg");
}

and then:

<img src="@Url.Action("GetImage", "SomeController", new { id = item.Id })" alt="@item.CountryName" /> 

Obviously now in your initial model you don't need the Image property. This will be retrieved subsequently in the controller action responsible for that.

---

Another possibility is to use data URI scheme to embed the images as base64 strings but it might not be widely supported by all browsers:

<img src="data:image/jpg;base64,@(Convert.ToBase64String(item.Image))" alt="@item.CountryName" />

You don't need a controller action in this case as the images are directly embedded into your markup as base64 strings.