Does the android web browser allow uploading photos just taken from camera?

Question

One of the crucial requirements in the application I am writing is that user being able to upload (input type="file") a photo from within a form.

Does the android web browser support File Uploads? If yes do all versions 1.5+ support it?

Answer 1

You can use this:

<input type="file" name="photo" accept="image/*" capture="camera">

The important thing is

capture="camera"

EDIT: as per lastest spec capture is a boolean attribute

Answer 2

The correct format for Device API HTML input is:

<input type="file" name="photo" accept="image/*;capture=camera"></input>

This is supported by devices with Android 3.0 (for tablets) or Android 4.0 and later (for phones). I have no idea which version of iOS starts to support this.

Answer 3

Yes and no. Some people seem to have problems doing so (as outlined in the comments). Although it worked for all my devices, it's entirely possible that a different browser might not at all implement this feature.

The user can however not upload any file on the SD Card, but Audio-, Video- and Image-Files that are on the internal/external storage. The kind of files you can upload depend on the installed applications. If you have a File-Manager installed (or shipped with the OS), you can also use it to upload any file you want (Gallery and Mediaplayer should always be present).

When the upload-button of a <input type="file"> is pressed, browsers seem to send the Intent.ACTION_GET_CONTENT-Intent, so every application listening to this is a possible file-source.

Answer 4

Yes, since Android 3.0 you are able to use device's camera through Device API. This snippet is taken from there

<form enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
  <h2>Regular file upload</h2>
  <input type="file"></input>

  <h2>capture=camera</h2>
  <input type="file" accept="image/*;capture=camera"></input>

  <h2>capture=camcorder</h2>
  <input type="file" accept="video/*;capture=camcorder"></input>

  <h2>capture=microphone</h2>
  <input type="file" accept="audio/*;capture=microphone"></input>
</form>

This source looks interesting when it comes to checking html5 support in mobile devices.

Answer 5

I wanted an easier way to get files off my phone rather than pulling out the SD card and I thought to just have a CGI program receive them on a web server so I had the same question. I wrote a small script that can successfully upload files from remote computers using a web browser. It looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/python
import os
import cgi

def tag(tag, contents=None, attlist=None):
    tagstring= "<"+tag
    if attlist:
        for A in attlist:
            V= attlist[A].replace('"','&quot;')
            attstring= ' '+A+'="'+V+'"'
            tagstring += attstring
    if contents:
        tagstring += ">\n"+contents.rstrip()+"\n</"+tag+">\n"
    else:
        tagstring += "/>\n"
    return tagstring

content_type= 'Content-type: text/html\n\n'
form = cgi.FieldStorage()

if not form:
    acturl= "./up.py"
    ff= tag('input','',{'type':'file','name':'filename'}) + tag('input',''{'type':'submit'})
    f= tag('form',ff, {'action':acturl, 'method':'POST', 'enctype':'multipart/form-data'})            
    H= tag('head', tag('title', "Uploader"))
    B= tag('body', tag('p', f))
    print content_type + tag('html', H + B)
elif form.has_key("filename"):
    item = form["filename"]
    if item.file:
        data = item.file.read()  
        t= os.path.basename(item.filename)
        FILE= open("/home/user/public_html/uploads/"+t,'w')
        FILE.write(data)
        FILE.close
        msg= "Success! " 
    else:
        msg= "Fail. "

    H= tag('head', tag('title', "Uploader"))
    B= tag('body', tag('p', msg + tag('a','Another?',{'href':'./up.py'})))
    print content_type + tag('html', H + B)

Running a test with a program like this is the only sure way to know if your brand of phone browser does what you want, but for me: it worked. I was even able to use Apache mod_auth to require a username and password and the Android browser politely let me input that. Then when I selected the choose file button, it brought up a menu offering to let me choose from the Gallery, music ap, sound recorder, and a file manager ap I installed. I picked a file from the gallery and, although it took its sweet time, it uploaded fine. So the answer to the question for me was "yes". And for you - try out a test program like the one posted.