How do I include image assets in an Android app and reference them from a Room database

Currently I have a data class defined, included the image as a resource using the resource manager and use in a composable component, as follows:

data class Picture(
    val name: String,
    val imageId: Int = -1,
)

val picture = Picture(name = "Cake", imageId = R.drawable.cake)

@Composable
fun PictureItem(picture: Picture) {
    Card {
        Box(
            modifier = modifier.fillMaxSize(),
            contentAlignment = Alignment.Center
        ) {
            Column(
                horizontalAlignment = Alignment.CenterHorizontally,
                modifier = modifier.padding(16.dp),
            ) {
                Image(
                    painterResource(id = picture.imageId),
                    contentDescription = picture.name
                )
                Spacer(modifier = Modifier.height(8.dp))
                Text(text = product.name)
            }
        }
    }
}

I am trying to learn how to move the data into Room and was wondering how to handle the images when we do that. I imagined replacing the id reference with something that points to an image file but could not figure out how to approach it correctly.

Don't use resources for this. Resource ids are assigned at each compile time and are not stable- compiling the app with any changes could lead to a totally different arrangement of ids. Instead, use assets and open it from assets, with the pathname of the asset in the database instead of a resource id.

You could also use resources with names and do by name lookups, but that's not really recommended or efficient.