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Q:

How can a user acquire a media item from the file field? The file field points to a valid media item. 

A:

Sitecore version: tested with Sitecore CMS V5.3.1 rev.070727.

There is a number of ways to get the image referenced by the file field.

1. Getting the SRC attribute:
    
   First we need to get the instance of the XML field by its name:
   Sitecore.Data.Fields.XmlField fileField = item.Fields["File"];
    
   Then we need to get the attribute of the field value using the GetAttribute method:
   imageControl.ImageUrl = Sitecore.StringUtil.EnsurePrefix('/', fileField.GetAttribute("src"));
   After that we can assign the URL to an ASP.NET image control.
    
2. Getting the media item:
    
   First we need to get the instance of the XML field by its name:
   Sitecore.Data.Fields.XmlField fileField = item.Fields["File"];
    
   Now we can read the media ID using the same approach.
   Sitecore.Data.ID mediaID = Sitecore.Data.ID.Parse(fileField.GetAttribute("mediaid"));
    
   After that we can search for the media item in the context database:
   Sitecore.Data.Items.MediaItem mediaItem = Sitecore.Context.Database.Items[mediaID];
    
   If the item is found, we can read any property of the MediaItem object:
   if (mediaItem != null)
   {
   imageControl.ImageUrl = Sitecore.StringUtil.EnsurePrefix('/', mediaItem.InnerItem["Path"]);
   }