How can I extract a resource into a file at runtime?

delphi embedded-resource extraction
Mawg says reinstate Monica picture Mawg says reinstate Monica · Sep 10, 2010 · Viewed 11.9k times · Source

I want to distribute only a single .exe, however, at runtime I would like it to extract some embedded image resources to the users hard disk drive.

Can I, and if so, how?

Answer

Ken White picture Ken White · Sep 10, 2010

Use Delphi's TResourceStream. It's constructor will find and load the resource into memory, and it's SaveToFile method will do the disk write.

Something similar to this should work:

var
  ResStream: TResourceStream;
begin
  ResStream := TResourceStream.Create(HInstance, 'YOURRESOURCENAME', RT_RCDATA);
  try
    ResStream.Position := 0;
    ResStream.SaveToFile('C:\YourDir\YourFileName.jpg');
  finally
    ResStream.Free;
  end;
end;

If you can use the resource ID instead of name, it's a little less memory. In that case, you'd resplace Create with CreateFromID, and supply the numeric ID rather than the string name.

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