Get/pick an image from Android's built-in Gallery app programmatically

Question

I am trying to open an image / picture in the Gallery built-in app from inside my application.

I have a URI of the picture (the picture is located on the SD card).

Answer 1

this is my revisit to this topic, gathering all the information here, plus from other relevant stack overflow questions. It returns images from some provider, while handling out-of-memory conditions and image rotation. It supports gallery, picasa and file managers, like drop box. Usage is simple: as input, the constructor receives the content resolver and the uri. The output is the final bitmap.

/**
 * Creates resized images without exploding memory. Uses the method described in android
 * documentation concerning bitmap allocation, which is to subsample the image to a smaller size,
 * close to some expected size. This is required because the android standard library is unable to
 * create a reduced size image from an image file using memory comparable to the final size (and
 * loading a full sized multi-megapixel picture for processing may exceed application memory budget).
 */

public class UserPicture {
    static int MAX_WIDTH = 600;
    static int MAX_HEIGHT = 800;
    Uri uri;
    ContentResolver resolver;
    String path;
    Matrix orientation;
    int storedHeight;
    int storedWidth;

    public UserPicture(Uri uri, ContentResolver resolver) {
        this.uri = uri;
        this.resolver = resolver;
    }

    private boolean getInformation() throws IOException {
        if (getInformationFromMediaDatabase())
            return true;

        if (getInformationFromFileSystem())
            return true;

        return false;
    }

    /* Support for gallery apps and remote ("picasa") images */
    private boolean getInformationFromMediaDatabase() {
        String[] fields = { Media.DATA, ImageColumns.ORIENTATION };
        Cursor cursor = resolver.query(uri, fields, null, null, null);

        if (cursor == null)
            return false;

        cursor.moveToFirst();
        path = cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex(Media.DATA));
        int orientation = cursor.getInt(cursor.getColumnIndex(ImageColumns.ORIENTATION));
        this.orientation = new Matrix();
        this.orientation.setRotate(orientation);
        cursor.close();

        return true;
    }

    /* Support for file managers and dropbox */
    private boolean getInformationFromFileSystem() throws IOException {
        path = uri.getPath();

        if (path == null)
            return false;

        ExifInterface exif = new ExifInterface(path);
        int orientation = exif.getAttributeInt(ExifInterface.TAG_ORIENTATION,
                                               ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_NORMAL);

        this.orientation = new Matrix();
        switch(orientation) {
            case ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_NORMAL:
                /* Identity matrix */
                break;
            case ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_FLIP_HORIZONTAL:
                this.orientation.setScale(-1, 1);
                break;
            case ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_ROTATE_180:
                this.orientation.setRotate(180);
                break;
            case ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_FLIP_VERTICAL:
                this.orientation.setScale(1, -1);
                break;
            case ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_TRANSPOSE:
                this.orientation.setRotate(90);
                this.orientation.postScale(-1, 1);
                break;
            case ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_ROTATE_90:
                this.orientation.setRotate(90);
                break;
            case ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_TRANSVERSE:
                this.orientation.setRotate(-90);
                this.orientation.postScale(-1, 1);
                break;
            case ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_ROTATE_270:
                this.orientation.setRotate(-90);
                break;
        }

        return true;
    }

    private boolean getStoredDimensions() throws IOException {
        InputStream input = resolver.openInputStream(uri);
        Options options = new Options();
        options.inJustDecodeBounds = true;
        BitmapFactory.decodeStream(resolver.openInputStream(uri), null, options);

        /* The input stream could be reset instead of closed and reopened if it were possible
           to reliably wrap the input stream on a buffered stream, but it's not possible because
           decodeStream() places an upper read limit of 1024 bytes for a reset to be made (it calls
           mark(1024) on the stream). */
        input.close();

        if (options.outHeight <= 0 || options.outWidth <= 0)
            return false;

        storedHeight = options.outHeight;
        storedWidth = options.outWidth;

        return true;
    }

    public Bitmap getBitmap() throws IOException {
        if (!getInformation())
            throw new FileNotFoundException();

        if (!getStoredDimensions())
            throw new InvalidObjectException(null);

        RectF rect = new RectF(0, 0, storedWidth, storedHeight);
        orientation.mapRect(rect);
        int width = (int)rect.width();
        int height = (int)rect.height();
        int subSample = 1;

        while (width > MAX_WIDTH || height > MAX_HEIGHT) {
            width /= 2;
            height /= 2;
            subSample *= 2;
        }

        if (width == 0 || height == 0)
            throw new InvalidObjectException(null);

        Options options = new Options();
        options.inSampleSize = subSample;
        Bitmap subSampled = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(resolver.openInputStream(uri), null, options);

        Bitmap picture;
        if (!orientation.isIdentity()) {
            picture = Bitmap.createBitmap(subSampled, 0, 0, options.outWidth, options.outHeight,
                                          orientation, false);
            subSampled.recycle();
        } else
            picture = subSampled;

        return picture;
    }
}

References:

• http://developer.android.com/training/displaying-bitmaps/index.html
• Get/pick an image from Android's built-in Gallery app programmatically
• Strange out of memory issue while loading an image to a Bitmap object
• Set image orientation using ExifInterface
• https://gist.github.com/9re/1990019
• how to get bitmap information and then decode bitmap from internet-inputStream?