How do I get back a saved picture on iPhone camera roll?

Question

I am new to iOS development and am trying to create a view that will allow the user to take a picture using their camera.

What I want to happen is when the user has taken the picture, it saves it to their camera roll. I believe that can be simply accomplished by the following statement:

//Let's say the image you want to save is in a UIImage called "imageToBeSaved"
UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum(imageToBeSaved, nil, nil, nil);

However, my question is, if the user leaves the view and then returns to it I still want that picture to be there. So how do I get back the same picture I have just taken/saved previously, so I can reload it when they reopen the view?

Any help would be great! Thank you.

you can user imagepicker for getting that image from photo album. or programmatically you can fetch the last captured image from album — Pawan Rai, Mar 15 '14 at 19:27
How would I grab the specific image using imagepicker? Does each image have an id when it is saved? — Stephen Bennett, Mar 15 '14 at 19:33
Actually you can save image to the Documents directory and read from this directory too. It's a persistent solution because Documents directory is located within your app's bundle and no one other app can access to it. — Igor Matyushkin, Mar 15 '14 at 19:45

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

This code snippet will get the latest image from the camera roll: reference link

ALAssetsLibrary *library = [[ALAssetsLibrary alloc] init];

// Enumerate just the photos and videos group by using ALAssetsGroupSavedPhotos.
[library enumerateGroupsWithTypes:ALAssetsGroupSavedPhotos usingBlock:^(ALAssetsGroup *group, BOOL *stop) {

    // Within the group enumeration block, filter to enumerate just photos.
    [group setAssetsFilter:[ALAssetsFilter allPhotos]];

    // Chooses the photo at the last index
    [group enumerateAssetsWithOptions:NSEnumerationReverse usingBlock:^(ALAsset *alAsset, NSUInteger index, BOOL *innerStop) {

        // The end of the enumeration is signaled by asset == nil.
        if (alAsset) {
            ALAssetRepresentation *representation = [alAsset defaultRepresentation];
            UIImage *latestPhoto = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:[representation fullScreenImage]];

            // Stop the enumerations
            *stop = YES; *innerStop = YES;

            // Do something interesting with the AV asset.
            [self sendTweet:latestPhoto];
        }
    }];
} failureBlock: ^(NSError *error) {
    // Typically you should handle an error more gracefully than this.
    NSLog(@"No groups");
}];

I wanted it to grab the same specific image everytime. If the user takes a photo with their camera or another app, wouldn't this code retrieve that image instead because mine would no longer be the last image taken? — Stephen Bennett, Mar 15 '14 at 19:38
you can save the image with a name , and get that specific image from album. that can be a solution. — Pawan Rai, Mar 15 '14 at 19:42
i will suggest you to save images from your app to a custom album, and get the last image from your album. — Pawan Rai, Mar 15 '14 at 19:43
This sounds like a good idea. How would I create a custom album? — Stephen Bennett, Mar 15 '14 at 19:45

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 15 '14 at 19:40

void UIImageWriteToFile(UIImage *image, NSString *fileName)
{
    NSArray *dirPaths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
    NSString *documentDirectoryPath = dirPaths[0];
    NSString *filePath = [documentDirectoryPath stringByAppendingPathComponent:fileName];

    NSData *imageData = UIImagePNGRepresentation(image);
    [imageData writeToFile:filePath atomically:YES];
}

void UIImageReadFromFile(UIImage **image, NSString *fileName)
{
    NSArray *dirPaths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
    NSString *documentDirectoryPath = dirPaths[0];
    NSString *filePath = [documentDirectoryPath stringByAppendingPathComponent:fileName];

    image = [UIImage imageWithContentsOfFile:filePath];
}

Image will be saved to and read from the Documents directory of your app's bundle with specified name.

Usage example:

UIImageWriteToFile(image, @"somephoto.png");

UIImage *fetchedImage;
UIImageReadFromFile(&fetchedImage, @"somephoto.png");

How would I parse a variable into the file name? I can't seem to get it to work. I have the following: UIImageWriteToFile(self.imageView.image, @"%@.png", self.fullname.text); — Stephen Bennett, Mar 16 '14 at 20:45

How do I get back a saved picture on iPhone camera roll?

2 Answers2

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