Showing Database Images in Power BI and Tabular
The Power BI image-rendering visualizations, such as Table or Card, expect image links to public servers hosting the images with anonymous permissions. This has obvious shortcomings. Can we load images from a database or Power BI data table? You bet, as Jason Thomas has demonstrated a long time ago. Here are the steps I followed to show the images from the Production.ProductPhoto table in the AdventureWorks2012 (or later) database. If you want to embed a few images into a Power BI data table (instead of an external database), you can convert them manually to Base64 using any of the online image converters, such as https://codebeautify.org/image-to-base64-converter and embed the resulting string into a Power BI data table (the Enter Data feature). Gerhard Brueckl takes this one step further by showing you how to automate the base64 conversion with many images.
- Import the table with the image column as usual in Power BI.
- In Power Query, change the data type of the image column to Text.
- Add a new custom column that prefixes the base64 string with “data:image/jpeg;base64,” (not the comma at the end) for jpeg images or “data:image/png;base64,” for png.
= Table.AddColumn(#”Changed Type”, “ProductImageEncoded”, each “data:image/jpeg;base64,” & [ThumbNailPhoto]).
The ProductImageEncoded column below shows what the final Power Query transformation should look like. Click Close & Apply to import the table in the data model as you’re done with the transformation part.
- In Power BI Desktop, select the ProductImageEncoded field in the Fields pane. Assuming the new ribbon, in the Column Tools ribbon, change the field category to Image URL.
- Add the ProductImageEncoded field to a Table, Card, Multicard, or Slicer visuals.
