Save (and Load) all the Images from a TImageList to a Single File

The WriteComponentResFile Delphi function can be used to store components and their properties to a single file using a resource file format.

Saving Images in a TImageList into a Single File

If you have a TImageList control populated with images, each of the (same sized) images can be accessed using the index of the image.

Images stored in a TImageList are used for different Delphi components like: Menus, TreeViews, ListViewes etc.

If you want to reuse images from a the TImageList control, you can populate the TImageList with images, store all the images in a single resource-like file, then reuse at run time, by dynamically restoring the TImageList control from the saved file.

WriteComponentResFile

To save an instance of a Delphi component and its properties to a file, use the WriteComponentResFile method:

WriteComponentResFile('ImageList.dat', ImageList1) ;

The ImageList1 is the name of the TIMageList component droped on a form and populated with images.

ReadComponentResFile

To read the component and its properties from a file, use the ReadComponentResFile function.

Suppose there were 4 images in the ImageList1 we saved to a file. To restore the image list with its images programmatically, and display the 4 images in 4 TImage controls, you can use the following code:

var
  imageList : TImageList;
begin
  imageList := TImageList.Create(nil) ;
  try
    ReadComponentResFile('ImageList.dat', imageList) ;

    imageList.GetBitmap(0,Image1.Picture.Bitmap) ;
    imageList.GetBitmap(1,Image2.Picture.Bitmap) ;
    imageList.GetBitmap(2,Image3.Picture.Bitmap) ;
    imageList.GetBitmap(3,Image4.Picture.Bitmap) ;
  finally
    FreeAndNil(imageList) ;
  end;
end;

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