Develop Reference

PhoneGap 2.9.1 - Camera; crashing due to background process limit

so after a lot of investigation, I finally made my app able to resume state (I simply just modified the OnCreate method in the MainAcitivity.java to load a "restore" page on activity kill if there is a saved bundle instance)
I believe once I fix this final problem, all will be good and I can finally sleep.
HOW do I get the Activity/Intent result from a Camera in PhoneGap once the app has been killed off due to the Background Processes limit or the possibility of "Do not keep activities being checked" (I have a surprising amount of users who have these restrictions enabled)
I thought it might be possible to make the camera save the file in a temp directory and then I just pass the URI through javascript as a hash url (so it'd be something like file:///android_www/index-restore.html#URI_TO_IMAGE)
But my only issue is - How do I even begin this in PhoneGap? I know what to do for everthing bar the temp storage of the image and retrieving the location through onCreate

Ok finally managed it, wrote a hacky solution but it works.
I modified the CordovaInterface and CordovaActivity by adding a function called "getSharedPref" which returns a shared preference that can be accessed throughout the app.
I modified Camera Launcher to force the stored name to be temp.jpg or temp.png depending on what ever input, then store it within the preference.
On the MainActivity.java, I use this.getSharedPref() if a bundle instance is not null, and then check for the key. Unfortunately the only way I could assign the variable in Cordova was by doing
super.loadUrl("javascript: var global_image = '" + file + "'");
then I did the usual routines to add the file in my program and it all work so far! Happy days
Down the track I will probably write a plugin to use, using super.loadUrl("file:///blablabla#" + file); didn't seem to work.
The only issues so far are that Images aren't resized and rotated correctly, and I still need to implement this for the PhotoGallery but so far so good.
edit:
I've managed to get the photos resized and re-orientated :) Next issue is implementing it onto the Photo Gallery now - intent.putExtra(android.provider.MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, file); doesn't seem to apply for some reason.
edit:
Latest update - so it turns out AFTER the App has seemingly "crashed", you still get the Intent back regardless, so modifying the source code even more it now auto-calls a global javascript function called "customRestore", which passes over information gathered from the intent and then goes through the normal routine of adding a photo.

Summary: Take a picture utilizing Camera Intent and display the photo with correct orientation (works on hopefully all devices)

It seems to be the simplest thing in the world: taking a picture within your Android app using the default camera activity. However, there are many pitfalls which are covered in several posts across StackOverflow and the web as, for instance, Null Intents being passed back, the orientation of the picture not being correct or OutOfMemoryErrors.
I'm looking for a solution that allows me to
start the camera activity via the camera intent,
retrieve the Uri of the photo, and
retrieve the correct orientation of the photo.
Moreover, I would like to avoid a device configuration (manufacturer, model, os version) specific implementation as far as possible. So I'm wondering: what is the best way to achieve this?

UPDATE: January 2nd, 2014:
I tried really hard to avoid implementing different strategies based on the device manufacturer. Unfortunately, I did not get around it. Going through hundreds of posts and talking to several developers, nobody found a solution that works on all devices without implementing device manufacturer specific code.
After I posted my solution here on StackOverflow, some developers asked me to publish my code on github. So here it is now: AndroidCameraUtil on github
The code was successfully tested on a wide variety of devices with Android API-Level >= 8. For a complete list, please see the Readme file on github.
The CameraIntentHelperActivity provides the main functionality, which is also described in more detail in the following.
Calling the default camera activity:
for Samsung and Sony devices: I call the camera activity with the method call to startActivityForResult. I only set the constant CAPTURE_IMAGE_ACTIVITY_REQUEST_CODE. I do NOT set any other intent extras.
for all other devices: I call the camera activity with the method call to startActivityForResult as previously. This time, however, I additionally set the intent extra MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT and provide an URI, where I want the image to be stored.
In both cases I remember the time the camera activity was started.
On camera activity result:
Mediastore: First, I try to read the photo being captured from the MediaStore. Using a mangedQuery on the MediaStore content, I retrieve the latest image being taken, as well as its orientation property and its timestamp. If I find an image and it was not taken before the camera intent was called, it is the image I was looking for. Otherwise, I dismiss the result and try one of the following approaches.
Intent extra: Second, I try to get an image Uri from intent.getData() of the returning intent. If this is not successful either, I continue with step 3.
Default photo Uri: If all of the above mentioned steps did not work, I use the image Uri I passed to the camera activity.
At this point, I retrieved the photo Uri and its orientation which I pass to my UploadPhotoActivity.
Image processing
Please take a close look at my BitmapHelper class. It is based on the code described in detail in that tutorial.
Moreover, the shrinkBitmap method also rotates the image if required based on the orientation information extracted earlier.
I hope this is helpful to some of you.

I have tested this code with a Sony Xperia Go, Samsung Galaxy SII, Samsung Galaxy SIII mini and a Samsung Galaxy Y it worked on all devices!
But on the LG E400 (2.3.6) it didn’t work and you get double pictures in the gallery. So i have added the manufacturer.contains("lge") in the void startCameraIntent() and it fixed the problem.
if(!(manufacturer.contains("samsung")) && !(manufacturer.contains("sony")) && !(manufacturer.contains("lge"))) {
String filename = System.currentTimeMillis() + ".jpg";
ContentValues values = new ContentValues();
values.put(MediaStore.Images.Media.TITLE, filename);
cameraPicUri = getContentResolver().insert(MediaStore.Images.Media.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI, values);
intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, cameraPicUri);
}

On a Galaxy S3 with CM 10.1 I get a nullpointer exception in BitmapHelper:
bm = BitmapFactory.decodeFileDescriptor(fileDescriptor.getFileDescriptor(), null, options);
subsequently my UploadPhotoActivity fails at:
try {
photo = BitmapHelper.readBitmap(this, cameraPicUri);
if (photo != null) {
photo = BitmapHelper.shrinkBitmap(photo, 600, rotateXDegrees);
thumbnail = BitmapHelper.shrinkBitmap(photo, 100);
ImageView imageView = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.sustainable_action_photo);
imageView.setImageBitmap(photo);
} else {
Log.e(TAG,"IMAGE ERROR 1");
}
} catch (Exception e) {
Log.e(TAG,"IMAGE ERROR 2");
e.printStackTrace();
}
at the second log (IMAGE ERROR 2).
After a couple of tries my camera broke and I got a "Could not connect to camera"-error.
Tested it on a nexus 7 and it works perfectly.
Edit: Narrowed it down to this:
fileDescriptor = context.getContentResolver().openAssetFileDescriptor(selectedImage, "r");
Although selectedImage contains this:
file:///storage/emulated/0/DCIM/Camera/IMG_20131023_183343.jpg
The fileDescriptor returns a FileNotFoundException. I checked the file system and the image is not saved at this location. The cameraPicUri in TakePhotoActivity points to a non existant image. I am currently checking where it all goes wrong.
Edit2: I figured out the error: Since the device is a Samsung, and tells the App that it is a Samsung device, your Samsung specific fixes are applied. Cyanogenmod does not need those fixes though, and in the end the code breaks. Once you remove
(manufacturer.contains("samsung")) &&
It works. Since this is a custom ROM you could not plan for that of course. I am trying to figure out a way to detect if the device is running cyanogenmod and then include this in your code.
Thanks for a nice camera fix!
Edit3: I fixed it to run on Cyanogenmod on the Galaxy S3 by changing your code to this:
Well, now it sometimes works, sometimes it does not. Strange.
if (getPackageManager().hasSystemFeature("com.cyanogenmod.android") || (!(manufacturer.contains("samsung")) && !(manufacturer.contains("sony")) && !(manufacturer.contains("lge"))))

I experience some problems when using this with Sony Xperia Z5.
I added this and it got a lot better.
if (buildType.contains("sony")&& buildDevice.contains("e5823")) {
setPreDefinedCameraUri = true;}
But 4 times out of 22 it restarted the camera and once it restarted two times. I restarted the App due to every test.
Is there some way to get around this or do I accept this result?
The thing is that if the camera restarts I can press the back button twice and boom, the image is there in my Imageview and saved

ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE orientation problem on Nexus S and Samsung Galaxy S I9000

I'm trying to shoot picture and store it into internal storage by using the following code:
Intent intent = new Intent(android.provider.MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
takenPhoto = new File(uploadsFolder, getNewPicFileName());
intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, Uri.fromFile(takenPhoto));
startActivityForResult(intent, SHOOT_MEDIA_REQUEST_CODE);
The problem is that on Nexus S and Galaxy S devices default and the single orientation for ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE intent is landscape. If i shoot picture in portrait mode, that picture is stored into "takenPhoto" file rotated.
That problem seems appearing only on Samsung Galaxy S devices (Galaxy S and Nexus S), another devices i tried make auto-rotate depending on orientation during image shooting.
I will very appreciate any help on that issue.

From what I can tell, this is happening because the MediaStore.Images.ImageColumns.ORIENTATION value isn't being set by this Intent. It does get set when things come through the normal camera app.
On my Nexus S, however, the file still gets the correct EXIF data. So you could get the orientation like this:
ExifInterface exif = new ExifInterface("filepath");
exif.getAttributeInt(ExifInterface.TAG_ORIENTATION,
ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_NORMAL);
Then you could use use ContentResolver.update add the correct ORIENTATION data. You just need to translate the ExifInterface orientation options to degrees rotated.
Your other option is to create your own Activity to operate the camera hardware and record the file. You'd then keep track of rotations & write the value into the metadata when saving a captured image. Since the Camera app is part of Android, you could probably copy & modify it without too much pain.

I have expereienced this issue also on the Samsung phones, including the Galaxy Ace, (I called the camera action an entirely different method from yours)
My guess is that this is the OS/hardware level issue. Have you tried taking a picture using the native camera application, and managed it to get the correct orientation in that app?

Android: MediaStore.Images.Media.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI ... show pictures in full size?

I guess this question has been asked before, but I can't seem to find a proper answer/solution.
Have a note-taking app, which allows to take pictures. For that I start an intent, that starts up the built-in camera-app. So far so good.
But when I show that image in my app, it's in a much smaller format :(
The funny/weird thing is, that the camera-app did take a full-resolution picture! But for some reason I can't get the full version to show in my app???
So, when I use the standard Android Gallery app, and go to that picture, it is very obvious that it's full size (I can zoom in and see details I really can't see when I zoom in, in my own app). Also, the dimensions are really those of the original picture, taken with the 5MP camera.
In my app, they are very small. My phone has Android 2.2, but the same happens on my emulator (Android 2.1).
How should I retrieve the pictures in my app??? Tried a couple of ways, but none works :( Don't need a complete example (allthough that's very welcome), just a few clues are enough to search for myself.
Tx in advance!!
Greetingz,
Koen<

Very weird, I found the solution/answer by looking at the _ID-values that were being inserted in my own database. First I noticed that when I selected an existing image (via the build-in Android Gallery), I did get the full size image.
When I first took a picture, I got a scaled image. So where was the difference. Apparantly at the location where the _ID of the picture got stored in my database. In my case, and probably most cases, this happens in the onActivityResult procedure.
First take a look at what I initially had:
if(requestCode == REQUEST_CAMERA && resultCode == RESULT_OK){
String timestamp = Long.toString(System.currentTimeMillis());
// get the picture
mPicture = (Bitmap)result.getExtras().get("data");
//save image to gallery
String pictureUrl = MediaStore.Images.Media.insertImage(getContentResolver(), mPicture, getResources().getString(R.string.app_name_short), timestamp);
insertPictureAttachment(mRowId.intValue(), Integer.parseInt(Uri.parse(pictureUrl).getLastPathSegment()));
The "insertPictureAttachment"-method does the actual inserting into the database.
Looking backwards, this was a bit weird anyway ... make a picture, so I could make an URI of it, and then get the last path segment (which is the _ID), so I could insert that into my database.
Eventually, it turns out that I can replace the above code with just one line:
insertPictureAttachment(mRowId.intValue(), Integer.parseInt(result.getData().getLastPathSegment()));
Much shorter, and actually makes more sense ... rather than getting the info from result.getExtras().get("data"), I get my info from result.getData(), which gives the _ID of the original, full-size image.
I will do some further research on this though, cause it's not clear to me yet why I actually don't have to call MediaStore.Images.Media.insertImage(...) ... maybe I will have to if I want specific features (like a custom file location or something like that).
Greetingz,
Koen<

Android Image Capture Saving Small Sizes on Milestone

I've written a simple app that opens the camera and supplies a path for saving any captured images.
The code basically looks like this:
File file = new File( Environment.getExternalStorage() + "myimages/",
"my_image.jpg" );
Uri outputUri = Uri.fromFile( file );
Intent intent = new
Intent(android.provider.MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE );
Intent.putExtra( MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, outputUri );
This works perfectly on my Droid. Images are consistently saved at 2592x1936. However, when testing on the Milestone, the images are saved at much smaller sizes such as 320x240 and 1280 x 1900. Using adb logcat, I can see that the image size is set as soon as the photo is taken.
It seems like there is a default setting on the Milestone causing this behavior.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
~Jeremy

Every phone has its own manufacturer written camera app. Every camera app decides how much to resize and/or compress any images taken. If you test on more phones, you will probably find that you're getting a variety of different image sizes and qualities. As long as you are using intents, it is up to whatever Activity that the user chooses to handle that intent (which could always be different than the default camera app anyway) to decide what to do with it.
If you want to enforce a particular image size or quality, you need to write your own camera activity. Keep in mind that different phones are going to have different hardware that takes images at a huge variety of different resolutions anyway. You should be able to get better than 320x240, but you will not be able to get a consistent size across all phones because the hardware is different.