converting an OpenCV Mat to a single string

For Nvidia jetson realsense depth map in touchdesigner, I needed to turn the OpenCV Mat into a single string to send OSC out in C++ using OSCPP.

Here’s the code I used to do that:

    cv::Mat processedImage;
    if(image.type() != CV_8UC1) {
	    image.convertTo(processedImage, CV_8UC1);
    } else {
	    processedImage = image;
    }
 
    // flatten image data
    std::vector<unsigned char> imageData;
    if (processedImage.isContinuous()) {
	    // assign starrtbyte, till endbyte to imageData
	    imageData.assign(processedImage.data, processedImage.data + processedImage.total());
    } else {
	    // if image is in multiple rows, for every row
	    for (int i = 0; i < processedImage.rows; i++) {
		    // join rows
		    imageData.insert(imageData.end(), processedImage.ptr<unsigned char>(i), processedImage.ptr<unsigned char>(i) + processedImage.cols);
	    }