Creating dynamic images in ASP.NET

You might know that cre­at­ing images in ASP was not pos­si­ble with­out some sort of third party com­po­nent or some plug-in to the browser or server. Many web­sites bought Macro­me­dia Gen­er­a­tor which could together with ASP cre­ate nice images on the server and then send them to the browser. But now with .NET and the new ver­sion of ASP.NET it has become embarass­ingly sim­ple for everyone.

You might know that cre­at­ing images in ASP was not pos­si­ble with­out some sort of third party com­po­nent or some plug-in to the browser or server. Many web­sites bought Macro­me­dia Gen­er­a­tor which could together with ASP cre­ate nice images on the server and then send them to the browser. But now with Microsoft.NET and the new ver­sion of ASP ASP.NET it has become embarass­ingly sim­ple for every­one (if you only have ASP, then I've included links to some web­sites that make server-side objects for you to use).

In ASP.NET the name­spaces sec­tion is cru­cial. With the right name­spaces we are able to call and use prop­er­ties and func­tions that is nec­es­sary for this
code to work. Please view com­ments in the code.

<%@ Page Language="VB" ContentType="image/jpeg" %>
<%@ import Namespace="System.Drawing" %>
<%@ import Namespace="System.Drawing.Imaging" %>
<%@ import Namespace="System.Drawing.Drawing2D" %>
<%
Response.Clear( )

'Set height and width of the image
Dim intheight As Integer = 400
Dim intwidth As Integer = 150

Dim bmpimage As new Bitmap(intwidth, intheight,
PixelFormat.Format24bppRgb)
Dim objimage as Graphics = Graphics.FromImage(bmpimage)

'Set alias and color to fill with
objimage.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.AntiAlias
objimage.Clear(Color.LightBlue)

'Set properties of the lines...
objimage.DrawRectangle(Pens.White,1,1,intwidth-3,intheight-3)
objimage.DrawRectangle(Pens.Black,1,1,intwidth,intheight)

 'Set text; what text, font and where to write it (two axis).
 objimage.DrawString("Kick-Ass!!!", _
New Font("Arial", 12, FontStyle.italic), _
SystemBrushes.WindowText, New PointF(30,50))
objimage.DrawString("Search and see", _
New Font("Arial", 12, FontStyle.italic), _
SystemBrushes.WindowText, New PointF(25,75))
objimage.DrawString("All .NET", _
New Font("Arial", 12, FontStyle.italic), _
SystemBrushes.WindowText, New PointF(35,150))
objimage.DrawString("www.ngcode.com", _
New Font("Arial", 8, FontStyle.Bold), _
SystemBrushes.WindowText, New PointF(20,200))

 'Display the image as a jpg
 bmpIMAGE.Save(Response.OutputStream, ImageFormat.Jpeg)
objimage.Dispose( )
bmpIMAGE.Dispose( )

Response.End( )

%>

Other rec­om­mended sites if you have ASP.NET

• (MSDN) Cre­ate Snazzy Web
  Charts and Graph­ics On the Fly with the .NET Frame­work by Scott Mitchell
• (DotJunkies) Cre­at­ing graph­ics
  on-the-fly in ASP.NET by Eric Neff
• (ASP Alliance) Dynamic
  ASP.NET Text Images by Chris Garrett

Other rec­om­mended sites if you only have ASP:

• (Server­Ob­jects) An
  AspIm­age com­po­nent — US$ 69.95
• (Web­su­per­Goo) The Image
  Glue com­po­nent — US$ 299
• (Pow­er­Web) Image 2-D com­po­nent
   – US$ 149? (It is a lit­tle
  unclear)