How can I display images from an arbitrary folder in Xamarin Forms on Windows 8

This may be a dead horse, but I need to be able to supply a local folder full of images OUTSIDE my Xamarin application - not as resources, not requiring compilation to add more images - and display those images in the application, in Image objects. My main target platform is Windows 10. Others nice to have, not required.

Xamarin Forms Image normally takes either a File name (no path) or a URI. I can't get either method to locate and display images from the local file system. I must be doing something basic wrong.

Non-working sample:

Image i = new Image();
i.Source = ImageSource.FromFile(some.png); // Needs to be from folder on local disk
grid.Children.Add(i, c, r);

Most articles I find explain how to bundle images WITH the application as part of the source; again I need to display them in the application from a folder WITHOUT bundling them with the application. Users should be able to add more images to the folder and they would work in the app without recompiling/reinstalling - like an image gallery.

EDIT: I am able to successfully read a text file using PCLStorage https://github.com/dsplaisted/pclstorage. Is there a way to wire that to Xamarin forms image?

Solution

You would need to write a platform specific class to read the images and return a stream that could be consumed by StreamImageSource. Then you can use DependencyService to expose this behavior to your Forms PCL.

Alternatively, you could use PCLStorage

  var f = await FileSystem.Current.LocalStorage.GetFileAsync (path);

  Stream s = await f.OpenAsync (FileAccess.Read);
  image.Source = ImageSource.FromStream(() => s);