access camera from uiwebview? - iphone

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>Show Camera";
//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