Viewing a file stored in Varbinary(MAX) in SQL Server - sql-server

Question

Let's say I inserted a file into a varbinary(max) field like so:
CREATE TABLE myTable
(
FileName nvarchar(60),
FileType nvarchar(60),
Document varbinary(max)
)
GO
INSERT INTO myTable(FileName, FileType, field_varbinary)
SELECT
'Text1.txt' AS FileName,
'.txt' AS FileType,
*
FROM
OPENROWSET(BULK N'C:\Text1.txt', SINGLE_BLOB) AS Document
GO
Of course my file now looks like this:
0xFFD8FFE000104A46494600010101004800....
Is there a simple and elegant way to retrieve this file?
My preference is to open it right away in a temp folder rather than saving and then viewing and deleting. In MS Access, this is as simple as using an Attachment field and double clicking to upload/download.

Answer 1

Since there is no built-in functionality in SSMS for this task I usually write a simple LINQPad script that extracts my varbinary column and writes it to the file system.
Something like this:
var results = from p in myTable
where p.ID == ... //your condition here
select p;
foreach (var item in results)
{
File.WriteAllBytes("C:\\" + item.FileName + item.FileType , item.Document.ToArray());
}

Answer 2

I am working with C# and ASP.NET, and I ended up doing this using a Generic Handler, later linking to it elsewhere in my website project:
public class ImageProvider : IHttpHandler {
public string connString = "...";
public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
{
context.Response.ContentType = "image/jpeg";
string sqlSelectQuery = "select img from table"
SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(connString);
conn.Open();
SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand(sqlSelectQuery, conn);
byte[] img = (byte[])cmd.ExecuteScalar();
context.Response.BinaryWrite(img);
}