How can I read image as binary data from database using Objective-C?

Question

NSString *aDescription = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:(char *)sqlite3_column_text(compiledStatement, 1)];
NSString *aImageUrl = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:(char *)sqlite3_column_text(compiledStatement, 2)];

I want to read aImageUrl as binary. How can I do that?

Answer 1

You need to use a BLOB (Binary Large OBject) if you want to store the actual image from that URL.

//Storage
UIImage *image = ...; //Retrieve image from URL
NSData *imageData = UIImagePNGRepresentation(image);
sqlite3_bind_blob(compiledStatement, 1, [imageData bytes], [imageData length], NULL);

//Retrieval
const void *data = sqlite3_column_blob(compiledStatement, 1);
int length = sqlite3_column_bytes(compiledStatement, 1);
UIImage *retrieved = [UIImage imageWithData:
                          [NSData dataWithBytes:data length:length]];