Question

I am working with an API which gives me an image as the example below. I am unsure how I can convert this array of values into an image. I have not seen this before.

Does anyone know how I can make the following array of values into a UIImage?

[255,216,255,224,0,16,74,70,73,70,0,1,1,1,0,96,...]

Answer 1

That looks like straight pixel buffer data, so you will have to guess the format (probably RBGA?) and the image dimensions (hopefully it’s fixed/guessable/included in the format). If you guess correctly you should be able to create a CIImage with CGDataProviderCreateWithData;

CGDataProviderRef provider = CGDataProviderCreateWithData(NULL, buffer, bufferLength, NULL);
//a reasonable guess
CGColorSpaceRef colorSpaceRef = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
int bitsPerComponent = 8;
int bitsPerPixel = 32;
int bytesPerRow = 4 * width;

CGImageRef imageRef = CGImageCreate(width, height, bitsPerComponent, bitsPerPixel, bytesPerRow, colorSpaceRef, kCGBitmapByteOrderDefault, provider, NULL, NO, kCGRenderingIntentDefault);
UIImage *newUIImage = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:imageRef];
CGImageRelease(imageRef); 
CGDataProviderRelease(provider);