Xamarin - Show image from base64 string

Question

I'm pretty new to Xamarin and XAML stuff and here is what I've done so far in my portable project used by Android & iPhone (only using Android):

Item.cs (loaded from JSON)

    [JsonProperty("image")]
    private string ImageBase64 { get; set; }

    [JsonIgnore]
    private Xamarin.Forms.Image _image = null;

    [JsonIgnore]
    public Xamarin.Forms.Image Image
    {
        get
        {
            if (_image == null)
            {
                _image = new Xamarin.Forms.Image()
                {
                    Source = Xamarin.Forms.ImageSource.FromStream(() => new MemoryStream(Convert.FromBase64String(ImageBase64))),
                    BackgroundColor = Color.White,
                    WidthRequest = 64,
                    HeightRequest = 64,
                };
                OnPropertyChanged("Image");
            }
            return _image;
        }
        private set
        { _image = value; }
    }

ItemsView.xaml:

<StackLayout VerticalOptions="FillAndExpand" Padding="5,20,5,0" >
  <Label Text="Items" VerticalOptions="Center" Font="35" HorizontalOptions="Center" />
  <ListView x:Name="list" ItemsSource="{Binding Items}">
    <ListView.ItemTemplate>
      <DataTemplate>
        <ImageCell
                        Text="{Binding ItemName}"
                        Detail="{Binding Infos, StringFormat='{0}'}"
          Image.Source="{Binding Path=Image}">
        </ImageCell>
      </DataTemplate>
    </ListView.ItemTemplate>
  </ListView>
</StackLayout>

I correctly get my labels displayed but the image isn't. Can someone explain me what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

The type of your Image property should be ImageSource, not Image, as you apparently want to bind an ImageCell's ImageSource property. Besides that, calling OnPropertyChanged in a property getter never works, because the PropertyChanged event has to be fired before a binding (or any other consumer) can get a changed property value.

Instead of Image.Source="{Binding ...}, the correct binding would have to be

<ImageCell ... ImageSource="{Binding Path=Image}" />

The properties should be declared like this:

private string imageBase64;
public string ImageBase64
{
    get { return imageBase64; }
    set
    {
        imageBase64 = value;
        OnPropertyChanged("ImageBase64");

        Image = Xamarin.Forms.ImageSource.FromStream(
            () => new MemoryStream(Convert.FromBase64String(imageBase64)));
    } 
}

private Xamarin.Forms.ImageSource image;
public Xamarin.Forms.ImageSource Image
{
    get { return image; }
    set
    {
        image = value;
        OnPropertyChanged("Image");
    }
}

If you really need lazy creation of the Image property value, you could make it read-only, and make the corresponding OnPropertyChanged call in the ImageBase64 setter:

private string imageBase64
public string ImageBase64
{
    get { return imageBase64; }
    set
    {
        imageBase64 = value;
        OnPropertyChanged("ImageBase64");
        OnPropertyChanged("Image");
    } 
}

private Xamarin.Forms.ImageSource image;
public Xamarin.Forms.ImageSource Image
{
    get
    {
        if (image == null)
        {
            image = Xamarin.Forms.ImageSource.FromStream(
                () => new MemoryStream(Convert.FromBase64String(ImageBase64)));
        }
        return image;
    }
}