Using the Camera In iOS 8 with Swift

There are many examples out there that solidly explain how to use a camera using Objective-C. They can be found here, here, and many other places. The one thing I had not yet seen was how exactly to use it when using the new Swift Language that Apple recently released.

Below is the code that can be used, and there are a two changes to note that have come with the iOS 8 SDK.  The first is UIImagePickerControllerSourceType  where before you would access it by calling UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera now you call  UIImagePickerControllerSourceType.Camera . The second has more to do with strings different types, CFString vs NSString so to deal with this little issue the following code exists:

let compResult:CFComparisonResult = CFStringCompare(mediaType as NSString!, kUTTypeImage, CFStringCompareFlags.CompareCaseInsensitive)

        if ( compResult == CFComparisonResult.CompareEqualTo ) {

Other than that there are the obvious differences between Objective-C and Swift. I hope this helps.

Example Code:

import UIKit

import CoreData

import MobileCoreServices

class CameraVC: UIViewController,UINavigationControllerDelegate,UIImagePickerControllerDelegate {

    @IBOutlet weak var cameraView: UIImageView!

    

    override func viewDidLoad() {

        super.viewDidLoad()

        

        // Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.

    }

    

    override func viewWillAppear(animated: Bool) {

        

    }

    

    override func didReceiveMemoryWarning() {

        super.didReceiveMemoryWarning()

        // Dispose of any resources that can be recreated.

    }

    

    // MARK: - Action Methods

    

    @IBAction func takePhoto(sender: AnyObject) {

        if (UIImagePickerController.isSourceTypeAvailable(UIImagePickerControllerSourceType.Camera)){

            var picker = UIImagePickerController()

            picker.delegate = self

            picker.sourceType = UIImagePickerControllerSourceType.Camera

            var mediaTypes: Array<AnyObject> = [kUTTypeImage]

            picker.mediaTypes = mediaTypes

            picker.allowsEditing = true

            self.presentViewController(picker, animated: true, completion: nil)

            

            

        }

        else{

            NSLog("No Camera.")

        }

    }

    

    // MARK: - Delegate Methods

    

    func imagePickerController(picker: UIImagePickerController, didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo info: NSDictionary!) {

        NSLog("Did Finish Picking")

        let mediaType = info[UIImagePickerControllerMediaType] as String

        var originalImage:UIImage?, editedImage:UIImage?, imageToSave:UIImage?

        

        // Handle a still image capture

        let compResult:CFComparisonResult = CFStringCompare(mediaType as NSString!, kUTTypeImage, CFStringCompareFlags.CompareCaseInsensitive)

        if ( compResult == CFComparisonResult.CompareEqualTo ) {

                

                editedImage = info[UIImagePickerControllerEditedImage] as UIImage?

                originalImage = info[UIImagePickerControllerOriginalImage] as UIImage?

                

                if ( editedImage == nil ) {

                    imageToSave = editedImage

                } else {

                    imageToSave = originalImage

                }

                NSLog("Write To Saved Photos")

                cameraView.image = imageToSave

                cameraView.reloadInputViews()

            

                // Save the new image (original or edited) to the Camera Roll

                UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum (imageToSave, nil, nil , nil)

            

        }

        picker.dismissViewControllerAnimated(true, completion: nil)

        

    }

    

    func imagePickerControllerDidCancel(picker: UIImagePickerController) {

        picker.dismissViewControllerAnimated(true, completion: nil)

    }

    

    

}