iphone - How to upload image that was taken from UIImagePickerController

Question

After user choose image from the iPhone library with UIImagePickerController, I want to upload it to my server using ASIHTTPRequest library.

I know that with ASIHTTPRequest I can upload a file with the file's URl, but how do I get the image URL?

I know I can get the image UIImagePickerControllerReferenceURL, that look like this:

"assets-library://asset/asset.JPG?id=F2829B2E-6C6B-4569-932E-7DB03FBF7763&ext=JPG"

is this the URL I need to use?

Answer 1

There are lots of answers that suggest UIImageJPEGRepresentation or UIImagePNGRepresentation. But these solutions will convert the original file while this question is actually about saving the file AS IS.

It looks like uploading the file directly from assets library is impossible. But it can be accessed using PHImageManager to get the actual image data. Here's how:

Swift 3 (Xcode 8, only for iOS 8.0 and higher)

1) Import the Photos framework

import Photos

2) In the imagePickerController(_:didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo:) get the asset URL

3) Fetch assets using fetchAssets(withALAssetURLs:options:)

4) Get the actual image data with requestImageData(for:options:resultHandler:). In the result handler of this method you will have the data as well as URL to the file (the URL can be accessed on Simulator, but unfortunately is not accessible on the device - in my tests startAccessingSecurityScopedResource() always returned false). However this URL is still useful to find out the file name.

Example code:

func imagePickerController(_ picker: UIImagePickerController, didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo info: [String : Any]) {
    dismiss(animated: true, completion: nil)
    if let assetURL = info[UIImagePickerControllerReferenceURL] as? URL,
        let asset = PHAsset.fetchAssets(withALAssetURLs: [assetURL], options: nil).firstObject,
        let documentsPath = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(.documentDirectory, .userDomainMask, true).first,
        let targetURL = Foundation.URL(string: "file://(documentsPath)") {

        PHImageManager.default().requestImageData(for: asset, options: nil, resultHandler: { (data, UTI, _, info) in
            if let imageURL = info?["PHImageFileURLKey"] as? URL,
                   imageData = data {
                    do {
                        try data.write(to: targetURL.appendingPathComponent(imageURL.lastPathComponent), options: .atomic)

                        self.proceedWithUploadFromPath(targetPath: targetURL.appendingPathComponent(imageURL.lastPathComponent))

                   } catch { print(error) }
                }
            }
        })
    }
}

This will give you the file AS IS including its correct name and you can even get its UTI to determine correct mimetype (in addition to determining it via file extension) while preparing multipart body for upload.