What I am talking about is like this website :
http://www.ernesthemingwaycollection.com
It has a static wallpaper and a set of images that change from page to page, I want to implement a similar way of displaying random images from a set of images using ASP.NET.
EDIT : I want the image to stay the same in a session, and change from a session to another.
The site you mentioned is not using a random set of images. They are coded into the html side of the aspx page.
You could place an asp Image control on your page. Then on the page's Page_Load function set the image to a random picture of your set.
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
this.Image1.ImageUrl = "~/images/random3.jpg";
}
You have different options on where to store the image set data. You could use a database and store the urls in a table. This would allow to use the built-in Random function found in SQL. Or you can save a XML file to the server, load that then use the Random .Net class to pick one of your xml nodes.
Personally i would recommend the Database solution.
EDIT: Because the server session is destroyed after 20mins you may want to look at using cookies so you can see the last random image they saw.
If you just want to rotate a set number of images you could use the ASP.NET AdRotator control (at last, a use for it!).
If you want to do something fancier, considering using a jQuery slideshow such jQuery Cycle Plugin. There is also a slideshow control in the AjaxControlToolkit, which is easy to integrate.
string imageDir = "/images/banner/";
public static string chooseImage(string imageDir)
{
string[] dirs = Directory.GetFiles(HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/images/" + imageDir + "/"), "*.*");
Random RandString = new Random();
string fileFullPath = dirs[RandString.Next(0, dirs.Length)];
// Do not show Thumbs.db ---
string fileName = string.Empty;
do
{
fileName = System.IO.Path.GetFileName(fileFullPath);
} while (fileName.Contains(".db"));
string imgPath = "/images/" + imageDir + "/" + fileName;
return imgPath;
}
private int RandomNumber(int min, int max)
{
Random random = new Random();
return random.Next(min, max);
}