How to store and retrieve a byte array (image data) to and from a SQLite database?

Question

How do I store and retrieve a byte array (image data) to and from a SQLite database in Android?

Solution

Byte array can be stored as BLOB data type. There's nothing special in this procedure except special care for chunking, like:

InputStream is = context.getResources().open(R.drawable.MyImageFile);
try {
    byte[] buffer = new byte[CHUNK_SIZE];
    int size = CHUNK_SIZE;
    while(size == CHUNK_SIZE) {
        size = is.read(buffer);  //read chunks from file
        if (size == -1) break;

        ContentValues cv = new ContentValues();
        cv.put(CHUNK, buffer);       //CHUNK blob type field of your table

        long rawId = database.insert(TABLE, null, cv); //TABLE table name
    }
} catch (Exception e) {
    Log.e(TAG, "Error saving raw image to: "+rawId, e);
}

Comments

[SadeepDarshana]

@gevorg why is chunking needed?

[SadeepDarshana]

@barmaley Are the chunks all appended into a single blob in a single record (that is do you get one final blob containing the whole image) or are multiple records created per chunk? (as in this code)

[gevorg]

@SadeepDarshana answer is not mine, I just corrected the code formatting.