[android] Android ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE Intent

We are trying to use the native camera app to let the user take a new picture. It works just fine if we leave out the EXTRA_OUTPUT extra and returns the small Bitmap image. However, if we putExtra(EXTRA_OUTPUT,...) on the intent before starting it, everything works until you try to hit the "Ok" button in the camera app. The "Ok" button just does nothing. The camera app stays open and nothing locks up. We can cancel out of it, but the file never gets written. What exactly do we have to do to get ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE to write the picture taken to a file?

Edit: This is done via the MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE intent, just to be clear

I had the same issue and i fixed it with the following:

The problem is that when you specify a file that only your app has access to (e.g. by calling getFileStreamPath("file");)

That is why i just made sure that the given file really exists and that EVERYONE has write access to it.

Intent intent = new Intent(android.provider.MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
File outFile = getFileStreamPath(Config.IMAGE_FILENAME);
outFile.createNewFile();
outFile.setWritable(true, false);
intent.putExtra(android.provider.MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT,Uri.fromFile(outFile));
startActivityForResult(intent, 2);

This way, the camera app has write access to the given Uri and the OK button works fine :)

I had the same problem where the OK button in camera app did nothing, both on emulator and on nexus one.

The problem went away after specifying a safe filename that is without white spaces, without special characters, in MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT Also, if you are specifying a file that resides in a directory that has not yet been created, you have to create it first. Camera app doesn't do mkdir for you.

I've been through a number of photo capture strategies, and there always seems to be a case, a platform or certain devices, where some or all of the above strategies will fail in unexpected ways. I was able to find a strategy that uses the URI generation code below which seems to work in most if not all cases.

mPhotoUri = getContentResolver().insert(MediaStore.Images.Media.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI, 
            new ContentValues());
Intent intent = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, mPhotoUri);
startActivityForResult(intent,CAPTURE_IMAGE_ACTIVITY_REQUEST_CODE_CONTENT_RESOLVER);

To contribute further to the discussion and help out newcomers I've created a sample/test app that shows several different strategies for photo capture implementation. Contributions of other implementations are definitely encouraged to add to the discussion.

https://github.com/deepwinter/AndroidCameraTester

You can use this code

private Intent getCameraIntent() {

    PackageManager packageManager = mContext.getPackageManager();
    List<ApplicationInfo> list = packageManager.getInstalledApplications(PackageManager.GET_UNINSTALLED_PACKAGES);
    Intent main = new Intent(android.provider.MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
    List<ResolveInfo> launchables = packageManager.queryIntentActivities(main, 0);
    if (launchables.size() == 1)
        return packageManager.getLaunchIntentForPackage(launchables.get(0).activityInfo.packageName);
    else
        for (int n = 0; n < list.size(); n++) {
            if ((list.get(n).flags & ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SYSTEM) == 1) {
                Log.d("TAG", "Installed Applications  : " + list.get(n).loadLabel(packageManager).toString());
                Log.d("TAG", "package name  : " + list.get(n).packageName);
                String defaultCameraPackage = list.get(n).packageName;


                if (launchables.size() > 1)
                    for (int i = 0; i < launchables.size(); i++) {
                        if (defaultCameraPackage.equals(launchables.get(i).activityInfo.packageName)) {
                            return packageManager.getLaunchIntentForPackage(defaultCameraPackage);
                        }
                    }
            }
        }
    return null;
}

protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
    super.onActivityResult(requestCode, resultCode, data);
    if (resultCode == RESULT_CANCELED)
    {
        //do not process data, I use return; to resume activity calling camera intent
        enter code here
    }
}

The workflow you describe should work as you've described it. It might help if you could show us the code around the creation of the Intent. In general, the following pattern should let you do what you're trying.

private void saveFullImage() {
  Intent intent = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
  File file = new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory(), "test.jpg");
  outputFileUri = Uri.fromFile(file);
  intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, outputFileUri);
  startActivityForResult(intent, TAKE_PICTURE);
}

@Override
protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
  if ((requestCode == TAKE_PICTURE) && (resultCode == Activity.RESULT_OK)) {
    // Check if the result includes a thumbnail Bitmap
    if (data == null) {    
      // TODO Do something with the full image stored
      // in outputFileUri. Perhaps copying it to the app folder
    }
  }
}

Note that it is the Camera Activity that will be creating and saving the file, and it's not actually part of your application, so it won't have write permission to your application folder. To save a file to your app folder, create a temporary file on the SD card and move it to your app folder in the onActivityResult handler.

I created simple library which will manage choosing images from different sources (Gallery, Camera), maybe save it to some location (SD-Card or internal memory) and return the image back so please free to use it and improve it - Android-ImageChooser.

It is very simple to solve this problem with Activity Result Code Simple try this method

if (reqCode == RECORD_VIDEO) {
   if(resCode == RESULT_OK) {
       if (uri != null) {
           compress();
       }
    } else if(resCode == RESULT_CANCELED && data!=null){
       Toast.makeText(MainActivity.this,"No Video Recorded",Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
   }
}

I recommend you to follow the android trainning post for capturing a photo. They show in an example how to take small and big pictures. You can also download the source code from here

The file needs be writable by the camera, as Praveen pointed out.

In my usage I wanted to store the file in internal storage. I did this with:

Intent i = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
if (i.resolveActivity(getPackageManager()!=null)){
    try{
        cacheFile = createTempFile("img",".jpg",getCacheDir());
        cacheFile.setWritavle(true,false);
    }catch(IOException e){}
    if(cacheFile != null){
        i.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT,Uri.fromFile(cacheFile));
        startActivityForResult(i,REQUEST_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
    }
}

Here cacheFile is a global file used to refer to the file which is written. Then in the result method the returned intent is null. Then the method for processing the intent looks like:

protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode,int resultCode,Intent data){
    if(requestCode != RESULT_OK){
        return;
    }
    if(requestCode == REQUEST_IMAGE_CAPTURE){
        try{
            File output = getImageFile();
            if(output != null && cacheFile != null){
                copyFile(cacheFile,output);

                //Process image file stored at output

                cacheFile.delete();
                cacheFile=null;
            }
        }catch(IOException e){}
    }
}

Here getImageFile() is a utility method to name and create the file in which the image should be stored, and copyFile() is a method to copy a file.

this is a well documented bug in some versions of android. that is, on google experience builds of android, image capture doesn't work as documented. what i've generally used is something like this in a utilities class.

public boolean hasImageCaptureBug() {

    // list of known devices that have the bug
    ArrayList<String> devices = new ArrayList<String>();
    devices.add("android-devphone1/dream_devphone/dream");
    devices.add("generic/sdk/generic");
    devices.add("vodafone/vfpioneer/sapphire");
    devices.add("tmobile/kila/dream");
    devices.add("verizon/voles/sholes");
    devices.add("google_ion/google_ion/sapphire");

    return devices.contains(android.os.Build.BRAND + "/" + android.os.Build.PRODUCT + "/"
            + android.os.Build.DEVICE);

}

then when i launch image capture, i create an intent that checks for the bug.

Intent i = new Intent(android.provider.MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
if (hasImageCaptureBug()) {
    i.putExtra(android.provider.MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, Uri.fromFile(new File("/sdcard/tmp")));
} else {
    i.putExtra(android.provider.MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, android.provider.MediaStore.Images.Media.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI);
}
startActivityForResult(i, mRequestCode);

then in activity that i return to, i do different things based on the device.

protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent intent) {
     switch (requestCode) {
         case GlobalConstants.IMAGE_CAPTURE:
             Uri u;
             if (hasImageCaptureBug()) {
                 File fi = new File("/sdcard/tmp");
                 try {
                     u = Uri.parse(android.provider.MediaStore.Images.Media.insertImage(getContentResolver(), fi.getAbsolutePath(), null, null));
                     if (!fi.delete()) {
                         Log.i("logMarker", "Failed to delete " + fi);
                     }
                 } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
                     e.printStackTrace();
                 }
             } else {
                u = intent.getData();
            }
    }

this saves you having to write a new camera app, but this code isn't great either. the big problems are

1. you never get full sized images from the devices with the bug. you get pictures that are 512px wide that are inserted into the image content provider. on devices without the bug, everything works as document, you get a big normal picture.

2. you have to maintain the list. as written, it is possible for devices to be flashed with a version of android (say cyanogenmod's builds) that has the bug fixed. if that happens, your code will crash. the fix is to use the entire device fingerprint.

To follow up on Yenchi's comment above, the OK button will also do nothing if the camera app can't write to the directory in question.

That means that you can't create the file in a place that's only writeable by your application (for instance, something under getCacheDir()) Something under getExternalFilesDir() ought to work, however.

It would be nice if the camera app printed an error message to the logs if it could not write to the specified EXTRA_OUTPUT path, but I didn't find one.

to have the camera write to sdcard but keep in a new Album on the gallery app I use this :

 File imageDirectory = new File("/sdcard/signifio");
          String path = imageDirectory.toString().toLowerCase();
           String name = imageDirectory.getName().toLowerCase();


            ContentValues values = new ContentValues(); 
            values.put(Media.TITLE, "Image"); 
            values.put(Images.Media.BUCKET_ID, path.hashCode());
            values.put(Images.Media.BUCKET_DISPLAY_NAME,name);

            values.put(Images.Media.MIME_TYPE, "image/jpeg");
            values.put(Media.DESCRIPTION, "Image capture by camera");
           values.put("_data", "/sdcard/signifio/1111.jpg");
         uri = getContentResolver().insert( Media.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI , values);
            Intent i = new Intent("android.media.action.IMAGE_CAPTURE"); 

            i.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, uri);

            startActivityForResult(i, 0); 

Please note that you will need to generate a unique filename every time and replace teh 1111.jpg that I wrote. This was tested with nexus one. the uri is declared in the private class , so on activity result I am able to load the image from the uri to imageView for preview if needed.

I know this has been answered before but I know a lot of people get tripped up on this, so I'm going to add a comment.

I had this exact same problem happen on my Nexus One. This was from the file not existing on the disk before the camera app started. Therefore, I made sure that the file existing before started the camera app. Here's some sample code that I used:

String storageState = Environment.getExternalStorageState();
        if(storageState.equals(Environment.MEDIA_MOUNTED)) {

            String path = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().getName() + File.separatorChar + "Android/data/" + MainActivity.this.getPackageName() + "/files/" + md5(upc) + ".jpg";
            _photoFile = new File(path);
            try {
                if(_photoFile.exists() == false) {
                    _photoFile.getParentFile().mkdirs();
                    _photoFile.createNewFile();
                }

            } catch (IOException e) {
                Log.e(TAG, "Could not create file.", e);
            }
            Log.i(TAG, path);

            _fileUri = Uri.fromFile(_photoFile);
            Intent intent = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE );
            intent.putExtra( MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, _fileUri);
            startActivityForResult(intent, TAKE_PICTURE);
        }   else {
            new AlertDialog.Builder(MainActivity.this)
            .setMessage("External Storeage (SD Card) is required.\n\nCurrent state: " + storageState)
            .setCancelable(true).create().show();
        }

I first create a unique (somewhat) file name using an MD5 hash and put it into the appropriate folder. I then check to see if it exists (shouldn't, but its good practice to check anyway). If it does not exist, I get the parent dir (a folder) and create the folder hierarchy up to it (therefore if the folders leading up to the location of the file don't exist, they will after this line. Then after that I create the file. Once the file is created I get the Uri and pass it to the intent and then the OK button works as expected and all is golden.

Now,when the Ok button is pressed on the camera app, the file will be present in the given location. In this example it would be /sdcard/Android/data/com.example.myapp/files/234asdioue23498ad.jpg

There is no need to copy the file in the "onActivityResult" as posted above.