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Load images from SQL table URL records

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Posted on by _Nick_

I've built an app that connects to a SQL database. I have a SQL table that contains links to images saved in Sharepoint cloud storage.

Like this:

Product Index	Product Name	Product Image
1	Product_1	SharePoint_URL_1
2	Product_2	SharePoint_URL_2
3	Product_3	SharePoint_URL_3

Is there a way I can load and display the images in my app?

Note: despite having SharePoint, I don't want to use SharePoint Lists. We're committed to organizing all our data through SQL.

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Building Power Apps

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timl 36,383 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi @_Nick_

If the SharePoint URL resolves to an actual image, you can display the image in an image control.

Let's say you add a gallery control with the Items property set to your SQL table, you would add an image control to the gallery and set the Image property to ThisItem.ProductImage

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_Nick_ 24 on at

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That's what I thought, but if I go to edit the fields of the gallery, the image dropdown only references image files that have been directly uploaded to the app. I can definitely access the URL column in general, because I can select it using the "Title" dropdown.

I'd do the ThisItem.ProductImage thing, but I don't get an "Image" property in the Gallery's property list.

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timl 36,383 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi @_Nick_

If you select the Image control from the gallery, you should be able to see the Image property (which you would set to ThisItem.ProductImage)

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_Nick_ 24 on at

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Oof, rookie mistake -- thanks for your help so far, @timl

However, I'm still not getting image content for some reason.

LEFT: A vertical gallery, effectively pulling the Product_Image_URL and Product_ID as title/subtitle content (where applicable) from the SQL table. However, the images, using the same ThisItem.product_image function, aren't returning the actual images. The only suggestion something might be happening is the weird blue line showing up for Product 23...

RIGHT: trying to get an independent Image object to work outside of the gallery context, I've the lookup function indicated in the formula bar to pull up the SharePoint URL record directly (Note: in my SQL table, the "Product Image" column is actually "print_orient"). Also no image showing.

Maybe I'm using the wrong URL? Here's the URL for the Product 23 image:

https://company.sharepoint.com/sites/ProductionCentral/Shared%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx?FolderCTID=0x01200028A2AF2D103A7343AE15D29B3E7F65FD&sortField=LinkFilename&isAscending=true&id=%2Fsites%2FProductionCentral%2FShared%20Documents%2FData%20Unification%2FShop%20Floor%20Drawings%2FPrint%20Orientation%2FTC16%2Epng&viewid=0ba7744b%2Dc022%2D42f6%2D9ca8%2D07c74868d48e&parent=%2Fsites%2FProductionCentral%2FShared%20Documents%2FData%20Unification%2FShop%20Floor%20Drawings%2FPrint%20Orientation

Should that be working, or should it be an URL that ends in .png or something?

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_Nick_ 24 on at

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Alright, after continued investigation, my conclusion is this: URLs won't work.

You need the image content to be directly in a table-type format. I got it to work by create a new "List" in the SharePoint space. From what I've read, I should also be able to store image content directly into my SQL tables.

Note: calling up images in Power Apps, but they're all blurry? Apparently "thumbnail" format is the default -- add ".Full" to your image reference to make it have the max resolution.

Thanks for reading, hope your troubleshooting wraps up asap.

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timl 36,383 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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With regards to your SharePoint URLs, are you sure that the URLs return the actual image? A SharePoint URL that displays an image can sometimes be a URL to a placeholder SharePoint page that hosts the image, so it's important to make sure that you're using the URL that returns the actual image.

Whilst it's possible to store images in SQL Server, storing the image in SharePoint or Dataverse is preferable because it provides the thumbnail functionality you refer to. Also, these data sources provide direct support for adding/deleting/updating images which isn't the case with SQL Server.

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_Nick_ 24 on at

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Aha, I think you're right about the placeholder page vs the actual image URL. Thanks! However, no matter the URL I save in SQL, PowerApps just reads it as the text it is.

My team also ran into permissions issues pulling actual images from SQL into Power Apps, so the SharePoint List method has ended up being the most functional. And to your point, it's going to be way easier managing that image content in SharePoint than it would have been through SQL.

Thanks again, @timl !

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timl 36,383 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Thanks for the update @_Nick_ - glad to have helped in some way.

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