How to make available binary data via Web Service

d3dek

First of all I want say HELLO to everyone because I'm new here.

I'm also new to NAV and C/AL. What I try to accomplish is to make images available via Web Service.
So i create code unit etc. and my question is how can i return such binary data? Under Return Value window only suitable data type is Binary but i don't have idea how to use it. Moreover in C/SIDE Reference Guide i found information that Binary data type is obsolete.

I make some search via Google and I found that BigText can be used, but there is no such type under Return Value window.

I'm using Dynamics Nav 2009 R2.

deV.ch

BigText can not be used as a return value type. However, you can assign a bigtext var as parameter of a function and make that paramter "VAR" (so this parameter is passed by reference)


Now you can fill you bigtext parameter with whatever you need. since you need to pass an image i assume this image is stored in a blob field in a table?
So then you would need to write the data from the blob into a stream then write to the bigtext.

I would recomend having a look at this solutions:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/freddyk/archive/2008/11/04/transferring-data-to-from-com-automation-objects-and-webservices.aspx
http://kfuglsang.com/post/2011/08/09/Dynamics-NAV-2009-Binary-Data-via-Web-Services-Without-Specialized-COM.aspx

BTW: If you don't want to use automation or com you could use dotnet interop and the StreamReader Class form the .Net Framework
This will give you a string which you can assign to your BigText variable.
Code would looke something like this:

Item.CALCFIELDS(Item.Picture); 
Item.CREATEINSTREAM(YourStream);
StreamReader := StreamReader.StreamReader(YourStream);
BigTextVar.Write(StreamReader.ReadToEnd());