Question

I am currently implementing a photo snapshot function to allow users to set their profile photo via webcam. To accomplish this, I am using jQuery Webcam Plugin.

The problem arises in that I would like to have the user click a “Take Photo” and have the snapshot saved to the server in the appropriate location to be retrieved by the user image APIs.

It seems this should be pretty easy to do, but for some reason I am running into problems. When my button is pressed, the photo capture takes place alright, but the saving doesn’t execute properly as I am receiving the error error: No save mode compiled in.

NOTE: My Save URL contains a hash variable like ?hash=XYZ123. This is how the image is named in the PHP file.

I’ve attempted to remove the hash and ref variable from the url, thinking perhaps this caused the image data to be lost/ignored somehow, but that yielded no difference. Can anyone see something I did wrong here? I am pretty sure I followed the documentation as well as several other posts located here on SO, like this one.

Screenshot

HTML

<div id="camera"></div> <!-- WebCam Live Display -->
<div id="wcStatus"></div> <!-- Debug Text Display -->

<button onclick="showWebcam();">Use Webcam Instead</button>

<!--This button is normally hidden until camera initialized, but for sake for demo-->
<button onclick="saveWebCam('XYZ123', '66');">Take a picture!</button>

JS

function showWebcam(){
    $("#camera").webcam({
        width: 320,
        height: 240,
        mode: "save",
        swffile: "/webcam/jscam_canvas_only.swf",
        debug: function(type, string) {
            $('#wcStatus').append(type + ": " + string + '<br /><br />');
        }     
    }); 
}
function saveWebCam(hash, id){
    var url = '/accountFiles/userImages/saveFromWebCam.php?hash=' + hash + '&ref=' + randomString(30);
    $('#wcStatus').append('Capturing: ' + url + '<br /><br />');
    webcam.capture();
    webcam.save(url);
}

PHP (saveFromWebCam.php)

<?php
    $destFile=$_REQUEST['hash'].'.jpg';
    $str = file_get_contents('php://input');
    file_put_contents($destFile, pack("H*", $str));     
?>

Debug Output

notify: Camera started

Capturing: /accountFiles/userImages/saveFromWebCam.php

notify: Capturing started.

notify: Capturing finished.

error: No save mode compiled in.

Answer 1

As is often the case, time constraints have forced me to seek alternatives to this project. I have decided, as many all over the web have, to use the jpegCam Project. I got it up and running in about 15 minutes. SIMPLE! The only reason I am not deleting this question is for future seekers of such knowledge.