Why is UIImage? nil here? - swift

Question

I'm trying to bridge React and Swift code by passing a string for an image path, which I've verified appears correctly on the Native side, and having a bit of an issue. The image path comes from React as NSString, and my goal is to pass that as a String to a Native function that will ultimately send data back to React.
Here's a snippet of some code that handles part of this
classifyImage(value as String)
and some of the body of the classifiyImage is as follows:
#objc func classifyImage(_ image: String) {
let imageData = Data(base64Encoded: image, options: .ignoreUnknownCharacters)!
let uiImage = UIImage(data: imageData)
guard let orientation = CGImagePropertyOrientation(
rawValue: UInt32((uiImage?.imageOrientation.rawValue)!)) else {
return
}
...code
}
The exact error is at the line with the rawVale, reading
Thread 1: Fatal error: Unexpectedly found nil while unwrapping an Optional value
Here's more info if it may help...
Image data can come from the camera as such image NSMutableString "file:///var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/54691469-2196-444E-9B45-C0D6F2CABEBC/Library/Caches/Camera/EEC3631C-3E96-44DA-B258-411363A2F10C.jpg" 0x00000002815a8420
or from the phone's gallery image String "ph://8F109DC0-CE95-4D0A-9D11-1B2E9CE6B8D3/L0/001"

Answer 1

Image from a file
First, we need to turn the string into a URL, then the URL into data like so:
let url = URL(string: image)
do {
let data = try Data(contentsOf: url)
} catch {
print(e)
}
Then we can use it to create the image.
do {
let data = try Data(contentsOf: url)
let image = UIImage(data: data)
guard let orientation = CGImagePropertyOrientation(
rawValue: UInt32(image.imageOrientation.rawValue)) else {
print("that didn't work")
return
}
} catch {
print(e)
}