Question

I am creating an application in which I want to capture a image and then I want to send that image in the email as a attachment.

I am opening a camera using android.provider.MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE intent action and I am passing the Uri of the file as a parameter EXTRA_OUTPUT to get the image back to the file. This is working perfectly and I am able to get the captured image if I use the external storage uri as a EXTRA_OUTPUT but if I use the data folder uri it is not working and the camera is not closing and its all buttons are not working.

Here is my code for get the result in the external storage directory

Intent i = new Intent(android.provider.MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
File out = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory();
out = new File(out, imagename);
i.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, Uri.fromFile(out));
startActivityForResult(i, CAMERA_RESULT);

And this code is for get the image in the data folder

Intent i = new Intent(android.provider.MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
File out = getFilesDir();
out = new File(out, MyPharmacyOptions.PRESCRIPTION_IMAGE_NAME);
i.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, Uri.fromFile(out));
startActivityForResult(i, CAMERA_RESULT);

I knew that the data folder is not accessible to third application so may be this causes an issue so I have create one content provider to share the file.

Here is my content provide class

public class MyContentProvider extends ContentProvider {
    private static final String Tag = RingtonContentProvider.class.getName();
    public static final Uri CONTENT_URI = Uri
            .parse("content://x.y.z/");
    private static final HashMap<String, String> MIME_TYPES = new HashMap<String, String>();

    static {
        MIME_TYPES.put(".mp3", "audio/mp3");
        MIME_TYPES.put(".wav", "audio/mp3");
        MIME_TYPES.put(".jpg", "image/jpeg");
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onCreate() {
        return true;
    }

    @Override
    public String getType(Uri uri) {
        String path = uri.toString();

        for (String extension : MIME_TYPES.keySet()) {
            if (path.endsWith(extension)) {
                return (MIME_TYPES.get(extension));
            }
        }

        return (null);
    }

    @Override
    public ParcelFileDescriptor openFile(Uri uri, String mode)
            throws FileNotFoundException {
        File f = new File(getContext().getFilesDir(), uri.getPath());

        if (f.exists()) {
            return (ParcelFileDescriptor.open(f, ParcelFileDescriptor.MODE_READ_ONLY));
        }

        throw new FileNotFoundException(uri.getPath());
    }

    @Override
    public Cursor query(Uri url, String[] projection, String selection,
            String[] selectionArgs, String sort) {
        throw new RuntimeException("Operation not supported");
    }

    @Override
    public Uri insert(Uri uri, ContentValues initialValues) {
        File file = new File(getContext().getFilesDir(), uri.getPath());
        if(file.exists()) file.delete();
        try {
            file.createNewFile();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        return Uri.fromFile(file);
    }

    @Override
    public int update(Uri uri, ContentValues values, String where,
            String[] whereArgs) {
        throw new RuntimeException("Operation not supported");
    }

    @Override
    public int delete(Uri uri, String where, String[] whereArgs) {
        File f = new File(getContext().getFilesDir(), "image1.jpg");
        if(f.exists()) f.delete();
        f = new File(getContext().getFilesDir(), "image2.jpg");
        if(f.exists()) f.delete();

        getContext().getContentResolver().notifyChange(CONTENT_URI, null);

    }
}

So to use this content provide I am using following code to pass the uri to the camera activity

Intent i = new Intent(android.provider.MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
Uri uri = MyContentProvider.CONTENT_URI;
uri = Uri.withAppendedPath(uri, imagename);
getContentResolver().insert(uri, null);
getContentResolver().notifyChange(RingtonContentProvider.CONTENT_URI, null);
Log.d(Tag, uri.toString());
i.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, uri);

startActivityForResult(i, CAMERA_RESULT);

Now if I pass the url other then external storage directory the camera is opening but it is not closing in emulator but in device the camera is going to closed but I am not getting the result.

I have declared this content provide in the manifest file

<provider
android:name=".contentproviders.MyContentProvider"
android:authorities="x.y.z" />

Also I have given the permission to write the external storage and also for use the camera.

I am able to capture the image using the external storage but I want to store the image in the data directory instead of external storage because if the external storage in not available I want to capture the image and want to send mail.

If I create content provide then I can also share my image to the email application.

If we not provide the extras with the camera intent it will return the image as a byte[] in the activity result as a data extra but this is for the purpose of the thumbnail so I can’t get the high resolution image using this way.

Answer 1

There are two ways to solve this problem.

1. Save bitmap which you received from onActivityResult method

You can start camera through intent to capture photo using below code

Intent cameraIntent=new Intent(android.provider.MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
startActivityForResult(cameraIntent, CAMERA_REQUEST);

After capture photo, you will get bitmap in onActivityResult method

if (requestCode == CAMERA_REQUEST) {  
    Bitmap photo = (Bitmap) data.getExtras().get("data"); 
 }

Now you can simply save this bitmap to internal storage

Note: Here bitmap object consists of thumb image, it will not have a full resolution image

2. Save bitmap directly to internal storage using content provider

Here we will create content provider class to allow permission of local storage directory to camera activity

Sample provider example as per below

public class MyFileContentProvider extends ContentProvider {
    public static final Uri CONTENT_URI = Uri.parse
                                    ("content://com.example.camerademo/");
    private static final HashMap<String, String> MIME_TYPES = 
                                     new HashMap<String, String>();

    static {
        MIME_TYPES.put(".jpg", "image/jpeg");
        MIME_TYPES.put(".jpeg", "image/jpeg");
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onCreate() {

        try {
            File mFile = new File(getContext().getFilesDir(), "newImage.jpg");
            if(!mFile.exists()) {
                mFile.createNewFile();
            }
            getContext().getContentResolver().notifyChange(CONTENT_URI, null);
            return (true);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
            return false;
        }

    }

    @Override
    public String getType(Uri uri) {
        String path = uri.toString();

        for (String extension : MIME_TYPES.keySet()) {
            if (path.endsWith(extension)) {
                return (MIME_TYPES.get(extension));
            }
        }
        return (null);
    }

    @Override
    public ParcelFileDescriptor openFile(Uri uri, String mode)
    throws FileNotFoundException {

        File f = new File(getContext().getFilesDir(), "newImage.jpg");
        if (f.exists()) {
            return (ParcelFileDescriptor.open(f,
                    ParcelFileDescriptor.MODE_READ_WRITE));
        }
        throw new FileNotFoundException(uri.getPath());
    }
}

After that you can simply use the URI to pass to camera activity using the below code

Intent i = new Intent(android.provider.MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
i.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, MyFileContentProvider.CONTENT_URI);
startActivityForResult(i, CAMERA_RESULT);

If you don’t want to create your own provider then you can use FileProvider from support-library-v4. For detailed help you can look into this post