Anatomy of a Camera App for iOS and Android
The 3 lines of code for the three action event handlers:
procedure TForm1.TakePhotoFromCameraAction1DidFinishTaking(Image: TBitmap);
begin
Image1.Bitmap.Assign(Image);
end;
procedure TForm1.TakePhotoFromLibraryAction1DidFinishTaking(Image: TBitmap);
begin
Image1.Bitmap.Assign(Image);
end;
procedure TForm1.ShowShareSheetAction1BeforeExecute(Sender: TObject);
begin
ShowShareSheetAction1.Bitmap.Assign(Image1.Bitmap);
end;
The Mobile Tutorial, "Taking and Sharing a Picture (iOS and Android)" can be found at http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE5/en/Mobile_Tutorial:_Taking_and_Sharing_a_Picture_(iOS_and_Android)
The Mobile Share Sheet with Delphi XE5 video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS6o4RgDX1g
A couple of additional notes about Camera apps and sharing images:
- iOS Share Sheet functionality first appeared in version 5 and was enhanced by Apple in iOS 6
- Android ShareActionProvider is available starting with Android API Level 14 and higher
- TShowShareSheetAction is part of the FMX MediaLibrary - http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/Libraries/XE5/en/FMX.MediaLibrary.Actions.TShowShareSheetAction
- Make sure to check Project | Options | Uses Permissions - for Android make sure the Camera setting is set to true (by default we set this True in debug and release configurations, you can change all permission options for the defaults you want for debug and release configurations).
You can get started now by downloading the RAD Studio XE5 trial at http://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/downloads
Comments
-
Tuesday, 17 September 2013David I, thanks for your efforts to improve Delphi (I'm a delphi user from 1)
I have read on some blogs's posts the Android emulator being very slow dues to it emulates the ARM architecture onx x86 ( of course this is a fault of the Android SDK).
I found and interesting article about a x86 Android emulator:
http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/android-on-x86-understanding-android-dev/240161434?elq=a10350cf3238440a85374ffb039d64d6.
However I think it is not usable until you provide a ARM/Android/X86 compiler.
Best Regards,
Stefano Moratto -
Tuesday, 17 September 2013
Excellent David I.
I have read that blog post as well and I was thinking about the very same thing... the amount of work required to make a simple camera app in that other framework is just absurd... I would like to answer to his blog post but I would not be able to reply to his attacks with proper words and articulations because I´m not a native english speaker.
I was time for someone to reply to his posts because he just publishes bullshit -
Wednesday, 18 September 2013
The number of lines of code to perform any given action is not the only measure of a development tool, especially when that measure is taken in a specific situation for which there may be an inordinate amount of framework support. Also the IDE support such as refactoring, code completion,code insight, templating etc, may make the time spent to produce the additional lines of code negligible. You are also comparing apples to oranges when dealing with one tool that accesses the native platform APIs and is thus constrained by the way those APIs work, to another framework that uses it's own UI APIs and only interfaces with the native APIs when necessary. There are trade offs to both approaches.
Not linking to the blog post(s) in question does not provide a complete picture for readers of this post, and combined with the content, leaves it open to interpretation as to whether this post is simply naive, or purposely misleading. Never underestimate the critical thinking abilities of developers.... -
Wednesday, 18 September 2013
Jack - "not able to use the camera under Android" - there may have been some issues in some of the field tests and on a few specific devices, but we have tested on a bunch of Android devices up and into the release version with success. What device did you test on? I have successfully run the ShareSheet snippet and my own camera demo apps on my Samsung Galaxy S4 and my Nexus 7 (2012 version) tablet.
-
Wednesday, 18 September 2013
Larry - we are focused both on programming and also on programmer productivity. Using more components and standard actions will help everyone be more productive on iOS and Android. Of course all developers can choose to take complete control in code.
This blog post was not meant to be a number of lines of code comparison and more of a productivity and XE5 feature highlight. The focus of XE5 is same code/components on iOS and Android.
Everyone can still also use the direct APIs on each platform. Our technology partner TMS Software provides iOS API specific components for Delphi iOS if developers want to go direct for the iOS platform - http://www.tmssoftware.com/site/tmsicl.asp.
The DeviceInfo mobile code snippet shows how you can also go direct to the device APIs via Objective-C (iOS) and Java (Android) if you want to or need to. Developers are not blocked from anything on all platforms and devices that we provide.
You can find the DeviceInfo snippet for iOS/Android at http://sourceforge.net/p/radstudiodemos/code/HEAD/tree/branches/RadStudio_XE5/MobileCodeSnippets/DeviceInfo/
Source code is at http://sourceforge.net/p/radstudiodemos/code/HEAD/tree/branches/RadStudio_XE5/MobileCodeSnippets/DeviceInfo/uMain.pas
iOS using the OCClass:
procedure TDeviceInfoForm.btnGetDeviceInfoClick(Sender: TObject);
var
Device : UIDevice;
begin
Device := TUIDevice.Wrap(TUIDevice.OCClass.currentDevice);
lbOSName.Text := Format('OS Name: %s', [Device.systemName.UTF8String]);
lbOSVersion.Text := Format('OS Version: %s', [Device.systemVersion.UTF8String]);
lbDeviceType.Text := Format('Device Type: %s', [Device.model.UTF8String]);
end;
Android using the Java class:
procedure TDeviceInfoForm.btnGetDeviceInfoClick(Sender: TObject);
var
codename: string;
version: TAndroidVersion;
begin
codename := 'Unknown';
version := TAndroidVersion(TJBuild_VERSION.JavaClass.SDK_INT);
lbDeviceType.Text := Format('Device Type: %s', [JStringToString(TJBuild.JavaClass.MODEL)]);
...
lbOSName.Text := Format('OS Name: %s', [codename]);
lbOSVersion.Text := Format('OS Version: %s', [JStringToString(TJBuild_VERSION.JavaClass.RELEASE)]);
end; -
Wednesday, 18 September 2013
To answer some questions about specific device support, our team has put together a starting document on our Embarcadero DocWiki that has some of the details about chip and device support. You can find this document online at http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE5/en/Android_Devices_Supported_for_Application_Development#Specific_Android_Devices_that_We_Have_Tested_and_Verified
This document will be continually updated as we do updates, additional testing and also as new devices appear and old devices disappear
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Wednesday, 18 September 2013
David: Tested the camera on a 2 months old HP 7 Slate with Android 4.2.1 on it.
On my release XE5 version the TCameraComponent.OnSampleBufferReady event is not fired rendering the TCamera component useless. The XE5 version was downloaded from the link in the maintenance portal. -
Tuesday, 12 November 2013
Jack:
I think there was a bug in the TCameraComponent that was fixed in Update 1. Check it out again and let me know!
-Jim -
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How can you explain that lots of people including me, are not able to use the camera under Android. This has been an issue in several bèta's and is still not solved.?
P.S. Using the debugger trying to find out wat is wrong is not possible due to the timeouts that occur when debugging is enabled in an Android application