Android: Efficient way to grab image from camera and send it to server

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I need my App to take a photo using the camera, show it in my Activities ImageView, and then sent it to a server using an HttpClient. So far, so good. Unfortunately, I stumbled upon the well described MemoryOutOfBoundsException. So I want to compress my image using JPG or PNG.

Now - after some excessive googling - do I get this right:

a) The camera will always output an uncompressed Bitmap, which is directly written to the file system. I.e. like this:

Intent cameraIntent = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
this.imageTempFile = new File(android.os.Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory(), "myTempFileName"); // write the camera output to a tmpFile
cameraIntent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, Uri.fromFile(this.imageTempFile)); // link the tmpFile to a member for convenience later on
startActivityForResult(cameraIntent, CAMERA_REQUEST);

So there is no way to resize / compress it right away?

b) If I want to display an image in a ImageView, I need to pass a Bitmap to it using ImageView.setImageBitmap(Bitmap bm). So showing the result is extremely memory consuming...!?

c) If I want to alter the Bitmap (resize / compress), I need to read it from this file into memory using a BitmapFactory

d) Now I can resize the Bitmap using Bitmap.createScaledBitmap()

e) But if I want to compress the image, I need to write it back to the file system using an OutputStream via Bitmap.compress()...

f) So for the task of taking an image, resizing it, showing it, and then sending it to a server, I need to actually write it to a file, then read it, then write it to a file again, then read it - and then send it? WTF? I there no easier way?

PS: Here's my code for b) to e):

// c) read the Bitmap from file
Bitmap bitmap;
BitmapFactory.Options bitmapOptions = new BitmapFactory.Options();

bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeFile(this.imageTempFile.getAbsolutePath(), bitmapOptions);

// d) do some resizing
bitmap = Bitmap.createScaledBitmap(bitmap, (int) mywidth, (int) myheight, true);

// e) compress
OutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream(50);

this.imageTempFile.delete();

File file = new File(this.imageTempFile.getAbsolutePath());

try {
    out = new FileOutputStream(file);
    bitmap.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG, 85, out);
    out.flush();
    out.close();
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

// NOW we could ready it again from the file to send it afterwards...

asked 1 min ago

Xenonite

41

Android: Efficient way to grab image from camera and send it to server