HTML5 web app to upload images to server - android

Is it possible to create an HTML5 application/website for mobile(android, Iphones, IPad) which will allow user to upload pictures from their mobile to server?
I am not looking for pure app, it could be a website hosted on any server.
Though, I am looking for my ASP.NET application but I believe that if I get solution for HTML, that would also be fine because I heard that mobile safari doesn't support upload in IPhone

iOS 6 supports uploading a file if it's implemented using HTML 5.
Just add the usual <input type="file" /> tag to your form. When user's click this they'll be prompted to either select an existing photo or take a new photo with the camera.

There is such a thing as an HTML5 File API, but, no, this is not possible on most mobile devices (and not possible in some desktop environments, including IE, either).
Android allows this in the most recent iteration (3.0), but the Safari browser in iOS doesn't have access to any filesystem from which to pull assets. For example, consider that you can't even add an image to an email except from the Camera/Library application itself.
Check out caniuse.com for a full picture of compatibility.

Related

Play Domain Restricted Video in Android/iOS App

I am building an Android & iOS App that has a video player, I am using one video hosting site(Wistia) for my videos. All videos are domain restricted, which means those will be played on a listed domain. The videos are getting properly played inside the web app(As we have allowed the video to be played for that domain) but I am not able to play those in my Android/iOS app.
Note: When I remove domain restriction from the video, then I am able to play the video in my app.
Can someone help me to find the domain of my Android app? Where should I define it in the code?
Below is the Wistia embedded code:
<script src="https://fast.wistia.com/embed/medias/j4q2kxdfd4.jsonp" async></script><script src="https://fast.wistia.com/assets/external/E-v1.js" async></script><span class="wistia_embed wistia_async_j4q2kxdfd4 popover=true popoverAnimateThumbnail=true" style="display:inline-block;height:84px;position:relative;width:150px"> </span>
Thank you.
Wistia is targeted at websites - they did have an iOS mobile app in the past but this was aimed more at contact owners, I believe, and is not supported anymore, either way.
They highlight this in their documentation (at time of writing):
Mobile OS Support
Most mobile devices only support HTML5 playback, which is Wistia’s default for mobile. This includes Android phones and tablets (4.1 and up), and iOS devices like iPhones and iPads.
To include Wistia in an app, the most recent way I have seen recommended by Wistia is to use a WebView and the standard embed code. This will allow you use the usual domain restrictions you have set.
The domain checking feature is most likely using the 'origin' or the 'referrer' field in the HTTPS request to determine the site the embed code is being used in. It is possible it is using a more complex mechanism than this but I think you will have to contact Wistia directly if and ask for support of that is the case.
Assuming it is this mechanism, you can look at the request headers in a browser inspector. For example, taking a site that uses Wistia and looks at the requests you will see something like this:
I've hidden the exact site name but both the origin and the referrer are the same top level domain name for the site hosting the videos.
The website on a mobile app will work the same way but if you are using a WebView in an Android app you will need to set the fields yourself, You may need to experiment as there seems to be different approaches but this is a good starting point: https://stackoverflow.com/a/5342527/334402
If you set these headers to a domain that is included in your set of allowed domains and the video still will not play then I think you will need to contact Wistia support directly.

Allow Phonegap's inappbrowser to access phone gallery?

Our app uses Phonegap's inappbrowser to point to our website. Our website (written in Laravel) has an edit profile page where you can upload a profile pic. This works fine on desktop but in the Phonegap app tapping the 'Choose Picture' button does not bring up the Android file system or gallery. I've installed both file system plugin and file transfer plugin for Cordova and it doesn't make a difference. Is my only choice really to re-write this part of the app custom for Phonegap using JS?
<input type="file" has a lot of know errors on mobile and isn't supported with Android WebViews in general. I would suggest using the FileTransfer Plugin to accomplish what you're trying to do. Use the upload method of this plugin to manually upload the file to the remote server. Also look at the Camera Plugin to choose which image on the device to upload.
Install the plugin cordova camera and also FileTransfer, I think that could help you much more than any kind of input, remembers working in the default browser and operating system often fail with different html attributes. There are several ways to get the picture from the device to make an upload to a server. If you're only working on Android, check your code on several devices since in some models (mostly Motorola) my fault I often a code if it works in Samsung for example. Always keep your updated plugins.
Plugin Camera
FileTransfer

What is the correct way developing website applications in Cordova?

I'm trying to do some simple website application for displaying my website and add some specific functionality to it.
My idea is to do something like Facebook app for mobile. Simply I need to display a website and replace File input - users should be able to capture a picture from camera or pick it from gallery (multiple select) and attach it to a post.
TL;DR;
Check images in the bottom.
What I have tried:
Using Cordova with Camera and Image picker plugin and displaying webpage in InnAppBrowser
Taking pictures with camera and picking pictures from gallery and then uploading them to server - there is a lot of examples of it.
What troubles I have found:
InnAppBrowser is forced fullscreen so I cannot resize it and place some buttons for picking pictures under it.
What do I need:
I just need to somehow attach images (from gallery or camera) to form file input or upload them to some kind of api instead - the api would process images on server and return some IDs which I can use instead of file input in the form on page to attach images to the post. Some hidden input where I would just insert IDs of uploaded images to be attached to the post (I'd write some if conditions into my PHP script).
I need my application to be multi-platform (Android, IOS, WP) so that is the reason I'm using Apache Cordova. I've tried lot of solutions and I've searched like for 5 hours. But I wasn't able to find anything useful.
Have somebody some experience in this way? Did somebody make some kind of that application?
If you can suggest any solution (it is not important to be a Cordova but it must be multiplatform) I'd be glad!
Thanks for your time!
Images
There is screen of desktop version with normal file input:
There is my vision of mobile application version with camera and image picker option right under web browser:
I guess I was not clear. The technical answer is Cordova/Phonegap are not for creating website applications. This means technically there is no "correct way" to do what you are asking.
For a website applications, all the pages are rendered from the website and controlled from the webpage/webbrowser.
For a mobile application, all the pages that the application can directly control are rendered on the mobile device. However, pages can be rendered (and/or created) from either the server or the mobile application, but the control of the page stays with the side that rendered (or created) the page. There is clear line between the two sides that can be moved, but at the *peril* of the programmer. (There are no points for being clever here, only added security issues.)
However, the Cordova and Phonegap do have plugins.The entire purpose is to use plugins to make certain task easier. However, there is a clear line between the phone and the website. To be clear on this last part, this means that all of the "plugin services" on the phone (accelerometer, contact list, etc.) are directly available to the application, and not the website. However, some of the "services" are also available as HTML5 APIs, such 'camera' and 'geolocation' – mixing the two is dangerous. The HTML5 APIs should remain on the webserver side, if used. The UX is different for HTML5. (I will not discuss HTML5 APIs any further, as they are beyond the scope of this discussion)
To make your idea work, you will need the following "core" (or equivalent third-party) plugins
file-transfer
camera (or equivalent)
inappbrowser
On the file-transfer and camera, you can do everything from the webserver, if you want. Then the only task for the end-user is to select the appropriate folder and image. If you do this from the server-side, then you CANNOT use the plugins.
If you want to use the plugins, then you cannot use a server-side generated webpage. You must create the form on the mobile device. This means the page and the form reside on the mobile device. However, if you write your webpage correctly you can dynamically add or delete elements. This means on the mobile side you have control over every step of the user experience and can enhance that experience.
On the inappbrowser, a common trick is to put the website in an iframe. However, you have no direct control on the iframe. Another common trick is to submit to the server via an API – then have the visible webpage update separately. Another common trick is to have a webpage with a websocket that could handle the webpage update. However, this could also be done with a push to the webpage, or have the webpage do polling of the server. Again, the App has NO direct control of the webpage.
This entire thread makes the following assumptions.
There is no "correct way" to do this task.
The images (photos) are stored on a website, and are publicly available for viewing.
It also assumes that no HTML5 APIs will be used.
If I interpreted your problem statement correctly, I believe what you are looking for is access to device native services - camera & gallery - from your mobile website.
A solution that fits your design requirements is for the browser to provide such services. Unfortunately WebKit and other browsers limit such support to things like Geoposition.
The way for Cordova to help you here is if your mobile website is an stand alone HTML5/CSS/JS application that can use CORS XHR or WebSockets to communicate with webindependent Web Services.
If you can bottle your website into a set of static html/js/css files that display content from dynamic web services then you are set. That same javascript can then call navigator.camera.getPicture(success, fail, options) and file-transfer the result to a waiting web service.
That camera api is not available to the InAppBrowser just as it is not available to WebKit Chrome/Safari/Edge. Trying to control the Mobile App via the InAppBrowser is most likely to fail due to security constraints.
What you might get away with is re-imaging your browser application as a series of discrete services that return raw html snippets suited for a new mobile app. Then write your Cordova app as the top level container that manages the navigation amongst the html snippets. This server-side rendering would be most useful if it was significantly challenging enough to overwhelm the mobile platform / web services pattern (think custom video server or expert system).
#Jakub,
Cedric has essentially stated it plainly. I will restate. You understanding about Cordova/Phonegap is not correct.
From: Top Mistakes by Developers new to Cordova/Phonegap
You have hit issue #5.
I QUOTE:
From Phonegap FAQ
A PhoneGap application may only use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. However, you can make use of network protocols (XmlHTTPRequest, Web Sockets, etc) to easily communicate with backend services written in any language. This allows your PhoneGap app to remotely access existing business processes while the device is connected to the Internet.
In addition, Apple frowns on using apps as wrappers for websites.
Quote Apple iTunes Guidelines - 2.12
Apps that are not very useful, unique, are simply web sites bundled as Apps, or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected
To be clear, your idea may be valid, but you will likely need to rethink your internal workflow. You likely want to keep the same UI and UX.

Android browser multiple file upload

I am trying to upload multiple images from android browser and having problems.
It seems to only allow 1 image upload at a time.
Here is the code I am using
<input id='image[]' name='image[]' type="file" multiple="multiple"/>
It works great on the Iphone and browsers on my computer.
Is there any way to get this working on android browsers?
Do android browsers support HTML5?
Modern Android browsers supports html5, this web browser is based on chromium, but on android devices and OS versions this is not posible right now. It seems to be an OS limitation... I have done a lot of research and on a lot of sites talks about this limitation. Check out this link which answer you question about multiple file upload reference per OS and web browsers link. If you want to know about file api per OS versions chech out this link
Update: Multiple file uploads seems to work as android 5.x using Chrome browser

Phone Gap external HTML intergration

I have built an application using phone gap, and plan to release the app for Apple iOS and Android OS.
The app it's self is fairly simple, and is essentially a glorified HTML website with a few jQuery mobile add-ins for slide functionality etc.
The client have an existing document management system which under request I have amended to be compatible for mobile displays. This being so that users can write notes and save them directly into the system from their phones.
The web document management system is restricted by login and locked out to a select group of static IPs, and because the App is going public, the want the functionality with the database to be limited to the same contraints as the web system...
To all intents and purposes, they want it to be an iframe within the app. So hey, this is what I did... iFrame complete and hey presto works a dream, oh wait, non of the form features work. I can't file upload or anything like this :/
So I tried using but no such luck here :/ same issues.
Over the weekend I looked into http://docs.phonegap.com/en/2.2.0/guide_cordova-webview_android.md.html but this looks to be completely in the wrong direction.
I've been looking all weekend for iFrame alternatives that will retain functionality, and am still looking as we speak.
Can I emphasise that this functionality works in the web system on Chrome for Android, Android native browser and also iOS's safari browser.
I essentially need a way of creating something like an iframe, but with the functionality of the native browsers :/ = bamboozled...

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