Import images from folder into SQL Server table - sql-server

Question

I've being searching for this on google but I haven't found any good explanation, so here's my issue.
I need to import product images, which are in a folder to SQL Server, I tried to use xp_cmdshell but without success.
My images are in C:\users\user.name\Images and the images have their names as the product id, just like [product_id].jpg and they're going to be inserted in a table with the product ID and the image binary as columns.
I just need to list the images on the folder, convert the images to binary and insert them in the table with the file name (as the product_id)
My questions are:
How do I list the images on the folder?
How do I access the folder with dots in their name (like user.name)
How do I convert the images to binary in order to store them in the database (if SQL Server doesn't do that automatically)
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I figured I'd try an xp_cmdshell-based approach just for kicks. I came up with something that does appear to work for me, so I'd be curious to know what problems you ran into when you tried using xp_cmdshell. See the comments for an explanation of what's going on here.
-- I'm going to assume you already have a destination table like this one set up.
create table Images (fname nvarchar(max), data varbinary(max));
go
-- Set the directory whose images you want to load. The rest of this code assumes that #directory
-- has a terminating backslash.
declare #directory nvarchar(max) = N'D:\Images\';
-- Query the names of all .JPG files in the given directory. The dir command's /b switch omits all
-- data from the output save for the filenames. Note that directories can contain single-quotes, so
-- we need the REPLACE to avoid terminating the string literal too early.
declare #filenames table (fname varchar(max));
declare #shellCommand nvarchar(max) = N'exec xp_cmdshell ''dir ' + replace(#directory, '''', '''''') + '*.jpg /b''';
insert #filenames exec(#shellCommand);
-- Construct and execute a batch of SQL statements to load the filenames and the contents of the
-- corresponding files into the Images table. I found when I called dir /b via xp_cmdshell above, I
-- always got a null back in the final row, which is why I check for fname IS NOT NULL here.
declare #sql nvarchar(max) = '';
with EscapedNameCTE as (select fname = replace(#directory + fname, '''', '''''') from #filenames where fname is not null)
select
#sql = #sql + N'insert Images (fname, data) values (''' + E.fname + ''', (select X.* from openrowset(bulk ''' + E.fname + N''', single_blob) X)); '
from
EscapedNameCTE E;
exec(#sql);
I started with an empty Images table. Here's what I had after running the above:
Now I'm not claiming this is necessarily the best way to go about doing this; the link provided by #nscheaffer might be more appropriate, and I'll be reading it myself since I'm not familiar with SSIS. But perhaps this will help illustrate the kind of approach you were initially trying for.