Question

I am having some troubles saving images path into Documents folder and store the path into my sqlite3 local db.

Today I successfully stored the images as BLOB into the db, but reading around the Internet, people said that this is not recommended.

So, now I’m trying to store image path in DB but..

Situation

1. User taps a button to choose an image (via UIImagePickerView) or take a new photo
2. After choosing the image, an imageView is set with the image chosen.

Code for picker:

-(void)imagePickerController:(UIImagePickerController *)pickr didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo:(NSDictionary *)info{
    UIImage *image = [info objectForKey:UIImagePickerControllerEditedImage];
    /* Test code for saving data */   
    //NSString *dir = [NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES) objectAtIndex:0];
    //NSString *pngPath = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/test.png",dir];
    //NSData *data = [NSData dataWithData:UIImagePNGRepresentation(image)];
    //[data writeToFile:pngPath atomically:YES];

    [imageView setImage:image];
    picture = YES;
    [pickr dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
}

Now I got a couple of questions

1. Into my db, image is BLOB type. Should I edit it to TEXT?
2. How is the path saved? I mean, in the test code /test.png is a generic image name. Does the chosen image name get saved too so that I can retrieve it? Or, better, if I save an image picked from my library with name “IMG0001”, does it get saved as “test”?
3. What’s the right way to save an image into documents folder, its path to the DB and then retrieve it?

I googled a lot to find an answer, but after experimenting a lot I gave up.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Here is nice tutorial on how to save images in Documents directory

You need to convert your BLOB field to TEXT field and just save file name of that image. You can also create folder in Documents directory and then access by foldername/filename.png.

Hope this information helps you..

EDIT

Here is code to check if that folder exits, If not exist create new that folder

NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentsDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString *documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0]; // Get documents folder
NSString *dataPath = [documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"MyFolder"];

if (![[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:dataPath]){

    NSError* error;
    if(  [[NSFileManager defaultManager] createDirectoryAtPath:dataPath withIntermediateDirectories:NO attributes:nil error:&error])
        ;// success
        else
        {
            NSLog(@"[%@] ERROR: attempting to write create MyFolder directory", [self class]);
            NSAssert( FALSE, @"Failed to create directory maybe out of disk space?");
        }
}