Say cheese! Sometimes it is necessary to export something you can see in your program to a picture file. Maybe you want to simplify creation of documentation or improve bug tracking. WPF has some simple methods to render a control in a picture format like jpeg, png, bitmap etc.
Example:
Here is a small window with some standard controls.
Click "Cheese!" and the following methods will render your interface to a jpg file.
private void WriteFile(string path)
{
byte[] data = null;
data = GetJpgImage(gridMain, 1, 100);
FileStream stream = new FileStream(path, FileMode.OpenOrCreate);
foreach (byte digit in data)
{
stream.WriteByte(digit);
}
stream.Close();
}
public static byte[] GetJpgImage(UIElement source, double scale, int quality)
{
Byte[] imageArray;
double actualHeight = source.RenderSize.Height;
double actualWidth = source.RenderSize.Width;
double renderHeight = actualHeight * scale;
double renderWidth = actualWidth * scale;
RenderTargetBitmap renderTarget = new RenderTargetBitmap((int)renderWidth, (int)renderHeight, 96, 96, PixelFormats.Pbgra32);
VisualBrush sourceBrush = new VisualBrush(source);
DrawingVisual drawingVisual = new DrawingVisual();
DrawingContext drawingContext = drawingVisual.RenderOpen();
using (drawingContext)
{
drawingContext.PushTransform(new ScaleTransform(scale, scale));
drawingContext.DrawRectangle(sourceBrush, null, new Rect(new Point(0, 0), new Point(actualWidth, actualHeight)));
}
renderTarget.Render(drawingVisual);
JpegBitmapEncoder jpgEncoder = new JpegBitmapEncoder();
jpgEncoder.QualityLevel = quality;
jpgEncoder.Frames.Add(BitmapFrame.Create(renderTarget));
using (MemoryStream outputStream = new MemoryStream())
{
jpgEncoder.Save(outputStream);
imageArray = outputStream.ToArray();
}
return imageArray;
}
Output:
Look at this beautiful picture!
Happy Coding.