Camera control inside an Android application - java

I am building an application for Android 2.2 which is based on a photo library. There is an option to take picture from camera and use it in the application. I am expecting:
To enable the camera from the application.
To take the picture.
To automatically close the camera and show the captured picture inside the application
Unfortunately, I am not able to get the captured image to the application. Once photo is taken, camera is not closing automatically or returning to the app. Now I have to click the back button to go to the app and select the picture manually select from SD card. Camera is opening through intent and I am using the following class.
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/Camera.html

You need to do two things. Start the Camera app and tell it where to store the picture that it takes:
File photo = new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory(), "myFile.jpg");
Intent intent = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, Uri.fromFile(photo));
startActivityForResult(intent, myRequestCode);
When the user closes the Camera app, you app and Activity will be resumed. So you must override onActivityResult to get the result:
if (resultCode == myRequestCode){
File photo = new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory(), "myFile.jpg");
// open it, show it, insert into MediaStore whatever
}
If you don't provide the place to save, you can alternatively retrieve it using either intent.getData or intent.getParcelableExtra using Intent.EXTRA_STREAM.

I guess .. you are doing similar to the below code
Intent cameraIntent = new Intent(android.provider.MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
// request code
startActivityForResult(cameraIntent, CAMERA_PIC_REQUEST);
using startActivityForResult instead of startActivity.. whenever you are done with your camera.. press ok.. and you will come back to your activity.. then in your activity onActivityResult callback will be called. here you will get the data for the clicked image.
Thanks.

Related

Open image chooser with camera option

How can I open an image chooser and show an option to take a picture as well?
Here's my code:
private void openFileChooser() {
Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.setType("image/*");
intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_GET_CONTENT);
startActivityForResult(intent, PICK_IMAGE_REQUEST);
}
The problem is that there's no open camera option. How do I add that?
And this is what I get:
You can use this library or show a normal alert dialog with two buttons, one for gallery and one for camera.
There is a similar question: Dialog to pick image from gallery or from camera
You have to specify an action for invoking a chooser/app via an intent. And since the action for selecting an image from gallery and taking a new image using the camera, are different, i don't think a chooser will have both option for uploading an image and taking a new image at the same time. For reference you could check profile picture changing procedure in facebook or whatsaapp. When clicking on the image to change, a custom dialog is shown with the option to either upload an image, take a new image, or select from a previously uploaded image. Based on what the user selects the app navigates the user to the particular app(camera/gallery etc)
What you can do is first create a custom dialog(or a layout based on your application's design) with two options
Take a new image.
Upload an Image from gallery.
Based on what the user clicks execute the code to navigate the user to, either the gallery or the camera application. If the user clicks on Upload an image from gallery, execute your above code and if the user clicks on Take a new image, then execute the code for opening the camera.
private void takeNewImage() {
Intent takePictureIntent = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
startActivityForResult(takePictureIntent,CAMERA_INTENT_REQ_CODE);
}

Open the default photo gallery app

I want the gallery app to be launched in a separate window, not in my app. I also dont want to choose a picture, I just want to open the default gallery app.
Some questions are very similiar to this one, but they all open the gallery not as a standalone app, always inside of the app which has called
startActivity(intent);.
see here. This is my app called SM2. inside, the default gallery app is visible, which is not the desired behaviour.
The following code has no use if there is no package named 'com.android.gallery' on the phone:
Intent launchIntent = getPackageManager().getLaunchIntentForPackage("com.android.gallery");
if (launchIntent != null) {
startActivity(launchIntent);//null pointer check in case package name was not found
}
this opens a gallery in my app, not as wished as a standalone task:
Intent intent1 = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(Environment.getExternalStoragePublicDirectory(
Environment.DIRECTORY_MOVIES)));
startActivity(intent1);
and this does also open the gallery in my app:
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(
"content://media/internal/images/media/"));
startActivity(intent);
It is launched inside of the application
It is being launched in your task. You can use FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK on your Intent to have it launch in its own task.
I also dont want to choose a picture, I just want to open the default gallery app
You are welcome to try using CATEGORY_APP_GALLERY, though not all gallery apps might have an activity that supports this.

Android Studio 1.0 - Using stock camera app and customizing file name after picture

Ok, so this code works great to call the stock android camera app:
public void clickEvent(View e) {
Intent intent = new Intent("android.media.action.IMAGE_CAPTURE");
startActivity(intent);
}
However, I need to capture that picture file after it's taken, rename it and maybe place it somewhere else.
Is there a way to do that?
You can set the EXTRA_OUTPUT extra on the intent to tell whatever app responds to the intent where to put the file.

Prevent Re Loading an Activity while returning from Camera App

I am creating an app which uses the camera app to take pictures. Once I return from the camera app the entire view gets recreated. To stop this I have added
android:screenOrientation="portrait"
android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden"
in the Manifest file for the specified activities. But this is still happening.
To be more precise of my issue, I am using Activity Group with TabHost. After a picture is taken using the camera I am redirecting the user to a different screen. But this is not working as the entire view is reloaded. Instead the user is taken back to the first screen in activity group.
I dont want this to happen. Is it posible to set orientation fro camera! How can I do this properly?
For those interested I am adding the code which I use to start camera
Intent camera = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
Uri pictureUri = Uri.fromFile(new File("/sdcard/myimage.jpg"));
camera.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, pictureUri);
this.getParent().startActivityForResult(camera, PICTURE_RESULT);
Thanks

Debugging Intents

I asked a question previously about what shows up in the IntentChooser when I send an Intent with ACTION_SEND and MIME type "image/png". The problem is that some phones come with a default messaging app that is not showing up in the list, mine included (myTouch 4G) as well as a user that I speak with over email (using an HTC EVO). If I choose a Send or Share option from the built in gallery app or another application on the same image I'm saving and attempting to send directly from my app, Messages shows up in the list. From my app it does not. Other phones don't have this problem, so it's clearly a platform specific thing. But that doesn't mean I should just ignore the problem.
So, I go to troubleshooting the issue. I register one of the activities in my app to receive the the same type of intent, and then hit a breakpoint to analyze the Intent object being sent from the two different ways of sending it.
The problem is, the intent I'm sending and the intent being sent from Gallery or AndroZip (where Messages does show up in the chooser) seem to be the same. They both have the same action, same categories, same flags, same mime type. What else can I inspect on the Intent from Gallery or AndroZip to tell if there's some more information I can add to my Intent to get the default messaging app to show up in the chooser in cases where it is not?
The problem is specific to HTC Sense phones, and it arises because their Gallery and Messaging apps are different to the stock ones.
Specifically the Intent sent from Gallery to Messaging has the action android.intent.action.SEND_MSG which is different to android.intent.action.SEND. The Sense messaging app doesn't handle SEND, unlike the stock messaging app.
So the question becomes, how is the Sense Gallery app creating an activity chooser dialog which combines both SEND and SEND_MSG ?
I've done some research and got mostway there... the code below works, but the "Messages" entry in the dialog appears at the top rather than in alphabetical order as per Gallery. Doubtless some more research into intents would correct that, but at least this works:
// Create a chooser for things that can ACTION_SEND images
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
Uri data = Uri.parse("content://media/external/images/media/98");
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, data);
intent.setType("image/jpeg");
Intent chooser = Intent.createChooser(intent, "Blah");
// Add the stupid HTC-Sense-specific secondary intent
Intent htcIntent = new Intent("android.intent.action.SEND_MSG");
htcIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, data);
htcIntent.setType("image/jpeg");
chooser.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_INITIAL_INTENTS, new Intent[] { htcIntent });
// Show the chooser
startActivity(chooser);
First of all, +1 to Reuben, he is the genius, not me. But I had to modify his code a bit to get it to work. Basically I had to putExtra() on the htcIntent or the image never got stuck to the Intent.
Tested and validated on a Droid X and HTC Incredible (which had the same problem until now thanks to Reuben).
Uri uri = Uri.fromFile(new File(mFile));
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, uri);
intent.setType("image/png");
Intent htcIntent = new Intent("android.intent.action.SEND_MSG");
htcIntent.setType("image/png");
htcIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, uri);
Intent chooser = Intent.createChooser(intent, "Send Method");
chooser.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_INITIAL_INTENTS, new Intent[] { htcIntent });
startActivity(chooser);
Edit: I realize I'm putting the image on two Intents now, but I couldn't get it to work any other way.
Instead of debugging the intents, why not try to compare how your starting the chooser with how the gallery is doing it. It is open source after all, so instead of trying to guess at the issue with the result, you can debug from the cause.
https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Gallery3D

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