Question

I know this is possible, saw this in some apps (iGotYa is I believe the most famous).
I know how to set up everything for taking photos, saving it and everything.
But how can it be done programmatically? just having the user click some button (in the regular view controller) and it will automatically take a picture using the front camera and saving it (or not, just getting it as a UIImage)

Thanks!

Answer 1

This is very simple, just use the AVFoundation reference guide:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/AudioVideo/Conceptual/AVFoundationPG/Articles/04_MediaCapture.html

If you don’t want the user to see the preview input you can just skip the set preview layer part of the code.

Edit: To be more detailed.

1)You set your capture configuration using the AVFoundation.

• Set the camera input to frontal, turn off flash etc etc.

2)You SKIP the part where the video preview layer is set.

3)You call the captureStillImageAsynchronouslyFromConnection:completionHandler: method whenever you want the picture to be taken.

Note: If you want the flash to not be heard and such then you might be violating the user rights in some countries (japan for example). One workaround I know of to do so is by capturing a frame of a video (does not trigger flash).