ImageVault

You’re having problems with ImageVault and can’t really understand why, ImageVault can tell you what’s up! The most common problem when ImageVault images are broken or doesn’t resize etc is because of user rights on the Data folder where ImageVault reads and writes images. A tool you can’t live without as a web developer is Filemon from SysInternals (now bought by Microsoft), it will tell you if access rights is the problem. But if you’re still having problems or perhaps something else inside ImageVault isn’t working the way it should there’s an undocumented web.config setting that enables debug output to a text file. I don’t really understand why this setting is never mentioned in the SDK or anywhere else for that matter. I found it a while ago through Reflector (now bought by RedGate but still available in a free version), another tool you just can’t live without! Reflector can disassemble a compiled .NET dll or exe and show the real code behind it unless it’s obfuscated.

This is how you enable debug output from ImageVault:

  • Create a folder to hold the output text file and make sure your application pool user can read/write files in it. Create the output file in the folder aswell, it seems ImageVault doesn’t create it if it doesn’t exist. Of course the file must also be read/writeable by the application pool user.
  • Add this key to your ImageVault config in web.config: DebugErrorLog=”c:\pathtologfolder\logfile.txt”. Example:
    <imageVault DebugErrorLog=”c:\Inetpub\mysite\ImageStoreNET\Data\iv.log” ImagePathOriginal=”c:\Inetpub\mysite\ImageStoreNET\Data\ImageDB” ShoppingOrderPath=”c:\Inetpub\mysite\ImageStoreNET\Data\Orders” AdminGroups=”ImageVault Admins” EditorGroups=”ImageVault Editors” ImageVaultConnStr=”Server=sqlserver;Database=iv_database;UID=user;password=password;” />

Now perform whatever steps to produce the problem and check the errorfile to get a clue about what’s wrong. If you still can’t solve the problem now it’s time to contact Meridium for expert help, they are usually very good at helping out and provide workarounds or implement a feature that you need in a future version.

Avantime has been working with ImageVault for 4+ years for a number of customers and run the largest(?!) existing ImageVault implementation at Electrolux for their Intranet.

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