Varbinary to richtextbox

SAM J

I insert .doc or .pdf files contents in Varbinary field in the SQL database using byte array.
Now i want to display this varbinary data in richtextbox in C#.Net.
How can i do this. Please Help!

4 Replies

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Sam Hobbs15y ago
You might be able to find a converter that takes as input a stream and if so you might be able to use a stream from memory. I don't know of anything like that but that is something to look for.
Vulpes15y ago
Not to my knowledge.

Is there some reason why you don't want to stream these documents to disk first?
SAM J15y ago
is der any way if i cud open the varbinary data to Micrisoft Word or Pdf reader without the need to save it to the pc?? I jst want to view the data in varbinary filed. P.S. I save the extension(.doc or .pdf) of the file along with data.
Vulpes15y ago
Well, the RichTextBox can only handle plain text and RTF.

So, you'd need to retrieve the varbinary field as a byte array and stream it to a disk file using File.WriteAllBytes.

You'd then need to use a PDF to text or DOC to RTF converter to get the document into a form which can be displayed in the RichTextBox. If you have to do this programatically, then these two links may help:

PDF to text (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/string/pdf2text.aspx)

DOC to RTF (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/convertdocintootherformat.aspx)