Image URL to Actual Image in a column using SAS Stored process

[ankitshah_15]

Hi All,

I have a column which has a Image URL. I would like to write a SAS Stored Process which will give me the actual image from the corresponding Image URL in a new column "Image". Is this feasible in SAS Stored Process?

Thanks in advance!!!

[Reeza]

Does your database support storing images in a column? AFAIK SAS does not natively but many DBs support this option. 

[ankitshah_15]

Hi Reeza,

I have the image URLs stored in Netezza DB. It allows storing of URLs in columns

[Reeza]

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@ankitshah_15 wrote:

Hi Reeza,

I have the image URLs stored in Netezza DB. It allows storing of URLs in columns

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Unless I'm mistaken, your question seems like you're asking to store the image, not the image URL? Does Netezza support image type columns?

If that's incorrect, what are you trying to do?

[ankitshah_15]

Hi Reeza,

Image URL is already stored in one of the columns in the Netezza table. My ask is to automatically fetch the images from the URL and display the image as SAS Output in one of the columns possibly via proc report

[Reeza]

That's significantly different than your initial question to store it in a data set. You can use PROC HTTP to download the image and store it locally and reference it or your HTML can reference the URL to include. It depends a bit on your output format, since an HTML report just links usually, HTML5, PDF, RTF, PowerPoint will embed the images. So you need to provide more details on what you're trying to do.

https://blogs.sas.com/content/sasdummy/2012/12/18/using-sas-to-access-data-stored-on-dropbox/

A similar idea to the blog post above can be used to download the file. But not you have it stored locally and still need to reference it somehow.

[Vince_SAS]

Using PROC HTTP to retrieve the image seems to be the correct answer.

Use DATA step code to get the desired URL from the Netezza database, store it in a global macro variable, and then use that macro variable in the URL option of PROC HTTP.

Vince DelGobbo

SAS R&D