Access camera from uiwebview?

Question

Can i access iphone camera from uiwebview? I know phonegap does this, but how to make it work without a phone call?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can implement the UIWebView delegate and intercept any attempt to load the page. By setting your own URL, you can send an Objective-C message that can trigger the camera. To send data back to the web interface, you can initiate a new download (as in my example) or pass another method to javascript in 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><A href=\"showcamera:\">Show Camera</a>"; //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 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