Question

Is it possible to access iphone’s camera from uiwebview? I know phonegap does it, but how to make it work without phonegap?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can implement the UIWebView Delegate and intercept any attempted page load. By setting a custom url, you can pass a message to Objective C, that can launch the camera. To send data back to the web weiw you can initiate a new load (as I do in my example), or pass in some javascript using another method on UIWebView.

Here is a working example, I just wrote:

    #import "WebViewCamAppDelegate.h"
    #import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
    @interface uiwebviewcameraAppDelegate : NSObject <UIApplicationDelegate, UINavigationControllerDelegate, UIImagePickerControllerDelegate, UIWebViewDelegate> {
        UIWindow *window;
     UIViewController *viewController;
     UIWebView *webView; 
    }

    @property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window;

    @end


    @implementation uiwebviewcameraAppDelegate

    @synthesize window;

    //This is the HTML we initially show in the WebView.  Note the url "showcamera:" is one I
    //invented with the intent to intercept it to show the camera.
    static NSString *htmlString = @"<br><A href=\"showcamera:\">Show Camera</a>";


    //Pretty Basic stuff.  We set the UIWebView Delegate so we can intercept the call and set up     //a ViewController so we can animate the UIImagePicker
    - (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {     
     viewController = [[UIViewController alloc] init];

     webView = [[UIWebView alloc] initWithFrame:window.bounds];
     [webView loadHTMLString:htmlString baseURL:nil];
     webView.delegate = self;

     [viewController.view addSubview:webView];
     [window addSubview:viewController.view];
        [window makeKeyAndVisible];
     return YES;
    }

    //Note: I check to make sure the camera is available.  If it is not (iPod touch or Simulator) I show the photo library instead.
    -(void) showCamera {
     UIImagePickerController *imagePicker = [[UIImagePickerController alloc] init];
     if ([UIImagePickerController isSourceTypeAvailable:UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera]) { 
      imagePicker.sourceType = UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera;
     }
     else {
      imagePicker.sourceType = UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypePhotoLibrary;
     }
     imagePicker.delegate = self;
     [viewController presentModalViewController:imagePicker animated:YES];
    }

    //Here we intercept any time the webview tries to load a document.  When the user hits our "showcamera: url" we go to work.
    - (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType {
     if ([[[request URL] scheme] isEqualToString:@"showcamera"]) {
      [self showCamera];
      return NO;
     }
     return YES;
    }

    //After the imagepicker has done it's thing, we pass the data back to the webview to be displayed.
   //If we wanted to be fancy here, we could have done this via Javascript so we could dynamically insert an image without reloading the page.
    - (void)imagePickerController:(UIImagePickerController *)picker didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo:(NSDictionary *)info {
     [viewController dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
     UIImage* image = [info objectForKey:UIImagePickerControllerOriginalImage];
     NSData *imageData = UIImageJPEGRepresentation (image, 0.5);
     [webView loadData:imageData MIMEType:@"image/jpeg" textEncodingName:@"UTF-8" baseURL:nil];
    }


    - (void)dealloc {
     [viewController release];
     [webView release];
        [window release];
        [super dealloc];
    }

    @end