Technical FAQs for "ImageGear.NET"

How do I use a Network Drive path for Image and ART storage in my ImageGear .NET web application?

In an ImageGear .NET web application, you have to define the location of the images and annotations directory in the storageRootPath and artStorageRootPath configuration property.
In the current version of ImageGear .NET, the storageRootPath and artStorageRootPath do not work with a network drive path \\SERVER-NAME\sharefilename.

The workaround for this would be to create a Symbolic link from a local directory to the network drive directory.

• To create a symbolic link: Open “Command Prompt” as Administrator and type in > mklink /d "local path" \\SERVER-NAME\sharefilename
• Pass in the path of the symbolic link as image or art storage root path in your web.config: storageRootPath="local path" artStorageRootPath="local path"

My service is crashing in IIS, and I see an error saying w3wp.exe has crashed in my Event Viewer. Why is my service crashing?

Normally, when there is an error in the Event Viewer saying that w3wp.exe has crashed, this means that your application pool has crashed. So, by extension, anything running on IIS will stop working. There are many reasons why this could happen, so to find out the root cause, there are a few things that you can do:

1. Look at the dump file generated by the Event Viewer
   that is tied to this specific error.
2. Run this file through WinDbg to get a stack trace of the
   error.

These two things should give you the information you need to determine the root cause of the problem. Below is an online article explaining in more detail how to get these two things and possible causes of the crash.

http://blog.whitesites.com/Debugging-Faulting-Application-w3wp-exe-Crashes__634424707278896484_blog.htm

Why do I get a “File Format Unrecognized” exception when trying to load a PDF document in ImageGear .NET?

You will need to set up your project to include PDF support if you want to work with PDF documents. Add a reference to ImageGear24.Formats.Pdf (if you’re using another version of ImageGear, make sure you’re adding the correct reference). Add the following line of code where you specify other resources:

using ImageGear.Formats.PDF;

Add the following lines of code before you begin working with PDFs:

ImGearFileFormats.Filters.Insert(0, ImGearPDF.CreatePDFFormat());
ImGearPDF.Initialize();

The documentation page linked here shows how to add PDF support to a project.

How do I remove XMP Data from my image using ImageGear .NET?

When removing XMP data in ImageGear, the simplest way to do this is to set the XMP Metadata node to null, like so:

ImGearSimplifiedMetadata.Initialize(); 
doc.Metadata.XMP = new ImGearXMPMetadataRoot();

Or, you can traverse through the metadata tree and remove each node from the tree:

// Example code. Not thoroughly tested
private static void RemoveXmp(ImGearMetadataTree tree)
{
ArrayList toRemove = new ArrayList();
foreach (ImGearMetadataNode node in tree.Children)
{
    if (node is ImGearMetadataTree)
        RemoveXmp((ImGearMetadataTree)node);

    if (node.Format != ImGearMetadataFormats.XMP)
        continue;

    toRemove.Add(node);
}

foreach (ImGearMetadataNode node in toRemove)
    tree.Children.Remove(node);
}

How do I use a Network Drive path for Image and ART storage in my ImageGear .NET web application?

In an ImageGear .NET web application, you have to define the location of the images and annotations directory in the storageRootPath and artStorageRootPath configuration property.
In the current version of ImageGear .NET, the storageRootPath and artStorageRootPath do not work with a network drive path \\SERVER-NAME\sharefilename.

The workaround for this would be to create a Symbolic link from a local directory to the network drive directory.

• To create a symbolic link: Open “Command Prompt” as Administrator and type in > mklink /d "local path" \\SERVER-NAME\sharefilename
• Pass in the path of the symbolic link as image or art storage root path in your web.config: storageRootPath="local path" artStorageRootPath="local path"

How do I ensure temp files are deleted when closing ImageGear .NET?

All PDF objects are based on underlying low-level PDF objects that are not controlled by .NET resource manager and garbage collector. Because of this, each PDF object that is created from scratch should be explicitly disposed of using that object’s Dispose() method.

Also, any ImGearPDEContent object obtained from ImGearPDFPage should be released using the ImGearPDFPage.ReleaseContent() in all cases.

This should cause all temp files to be cleared when the application is closed.