Using Camera in Android

This is a simple how to on how I solved the issue of taking pictures in one application, storing and showing them later.

I found that this simple task was not at all clear for me in the documentation, nor did I found a complete guide to get this task done. I hope if people find the same problem, this article may help them.





Device
HTC Desire with Android 2.2.

Contents
1. Take picture and save it, along with a thumbnail
2. Show thumbnail
3. Show full size image
4. Sample project


Taking picture and saving it

Taking picture
I'm using the camera Intent to take the picture... No extra parameters passed.

//
      Intent intent = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
      startActivityForResult(intent, TAKE_PICTURE);
      return true;

... and saving it
Closing the camera causes android to callback the onActivityResult method. I'm using a the static int TAKE_PICTURE=1 variable to identify the action that triggered this function request.

//
    //Called on intent return... used to grab pic 
    @Override
    protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
      if (requestCode == TAKE_PICTURE) {
        if (data != null) {
          
          //Full size pic stored automatically by the intent
          //lets grab the ContentProvider id for the image
          imageid = data.getData().getLastPathSegment();

          //Set thumbnail IMAGE_ID value, holding the reference to the full size picture
          ContentValues values = new ContentValues(1);          
          values.put(MediaStore.Images.Thumbnails.IMAGE_ID, imageid);
          
          //insert (thumbnail) record into MediaStore content provider
          Uri uri = getContentResolver().insert(MediaStore.Images.Thumbnails.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI, values);

          //write the actual thumbnail to "disk"
          try {
            OutputStream outStream = getContentResolver().openOutputStream(uri);
            Bitmap mBitmap = data.getParcelableExtra("data"); //thumbnail
            mBitmap.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG, 50, outStream);
            outStream.close();
          } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
          }catch (IOException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
          }
        }
      }
    }

Retrieve thumbnail
Just use the id from the code before to retrieve the thumbnail from MediaStore content provider.

Bitmap thumbnail = MediaStore.Images.Thumbnails.getThumbnail(getContentResolver(), imageId, MediaStore.Images.Thumbnails.MINI_KIND, null);

Show full size image
Using the same id...

//
    Uri uri = Uri.withAppendedPath(MediaStore.Images.Media.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI, ""+id); 
    Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
    intent.setData(uri);
    startActivity(intent);

Sample Project
Download full source from here (Eclipse project).


Feedback
Please let me know if you found any errors in this code or problems with other devices.