Reading the GPS data from the image returned by the camera in iOS iphone

Question

I need to get the GPS coordinates of an image taken with the iOS device\'s camera. I do not care about the Camera Roll images, just the image taken with UIImagePickerControl

Answer 1

As point out by Chris Markle, Apple does strip out GPS data from EXIF. But you can open the RAW data of the image, and parse the data yourself or use a third party lib to do that, for example.

Here is a sample code:

- (void) imagePickerController: (UIImagePickerController *) picker
 didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo: (NSDictionary *) info {

    ALAssetsLibrary *library = [[ALAssetsLibrary alloc] init];
    [library assetForURL:[info objectForKey:UIImagePickerControllerReferenceURL]
             resultBlock:^(ALAsset *asset) {

                 ALAssetRepresentation *image_representation = [asset defaultRepresentation];
                 NSUInteger size = (NSUInteger)image_representation.size;
                 // create a buffer to hold image data
                 uint8_t *buffer = (Byte*)malloc(size);
                 NSUInteger length = [image_representation getBytes:buffer fromOffset: 0.0  length:size error:nil];

                 if (length != 0)  {

                     // buffer -> NSData object; free buffer afterwards
                     NSData *adata = [[NSData alloc] initWithBytesNoCopy:buffer length:size freeWhenDone:YES];

                     EXFJpeg* jpegScanner = [[EXFJpeg alloc] init];
                     [jpegScanner scanImageData: adata];
                     EXFMetaData* exifData = jpegScanner.exifMetaData;

                     id latitudeValue = [exifData tagValue:[NSNumber numberWithInt:EXIF_GPSLatitude]];
                     id longitudeValue = [exifData tagValue:[NSNumber numberWithInt:EXIF_GPSLongitude]];
                     id datetime = [exifData tagValue:[NSNumber numberWithInt:EXIF_DateTime]];
                     id t = [exifData tagValue:[NSNumber numberWithInt:EXIF_Model]];

                     self.locationLabel.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Local: %@ - %@",latitudeValue,longitudeValue];
                     self.dateLavel.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Data: %@", datetime];

                 }
                 else {
                     NSLog(@"image_representation buffer length == 0");
                 }
             }
            failureBlock:^(NSError *error) {
                NSLog(@"couldn't get asset: %@", error);
            }
     ];
}