get a Bitmap object directly from a web resource

/*
* A function to get a Bitmap object directly from a web resource
*
*/

///

/// Get a bitmap directly from the web
///

/// The URL of the image
/// A bitmap of the image requested
public static Bitmap BitmapFromWeb(string URL)
{
try {
// create a web request to the url of the image
HttpWebRequest myRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(URL);
// set the method to GET to get the image
myRequest.Method = "GET";
// get the response from the webpage
HttpWebResponse myResponse = (HttpWebResponse)myRequest.GetResponse();
// create a bitmap from the stream of the response
Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(myResponse.GetResponseStream());
// close off the stream and the response
myResponse.Close();
// return the Bitmap of the image
return bmp;
} catch (Exception ex) {
return null; // if for some reason we couldn't get to image, we return null
}
}