iOS & Swift - How can I get and save a UIImage from the user?

Question

I am writing a Swift app for iOS. I want to know how to get an image from the user's camera roll (or whatever they're calling it these days) and save it locally within the app so that I can reference it later. How would one go about this? As an example, let's say I want to get the image and set it as the image for a UIImageView in my storyboard.

Answer 1

This is exactly what UIImagePickerController combined with NSUserDefaults will do.

For you it will be a two part task. First you will have to capture the image with a UIImagePickerController and then either store it in their photo library, or store it on their device with NSUserDefaults.

To store an image with NSUserDefaults, see this question.

Answer 2

Here is my combination.

Saving Image:

let imageData = NSData(data:UIImagePNGRepresentation(pickedimage))
let paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSSearchPathDirectory.DocumentDirectory, NSSearchPathDomainMask.UserDomainMask, true)
var docs: String = paths[0] as! String
let fullPath = docs.stringByAppendingPathComponent("yourNameImg.png")
let result = imageData.writeToFile(fullPath, atomically: true)

print(fullPath)

Get Image:

let nsDocumentDirectory = NSSearchPathDirectory.DocumentDirectory
let nsUserDomainMask    = NSSearchPathDomainMask.UserDomainMask
if let paths            = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(nsDocumentDirectory, nsUserDomainMask, true)
{
    if paths.count > 0
    {
        if let dirPath = paths[0] as? String
        {
            let readPath = dirPath.stringByAppendingPathComponent("yourNameImg.png")
            let image    = UIImage(contentsOfFile: readPath)

            UploadImagePreview.image = image
        }
    }
}

We can try with Photos Framework to fetch the last saved image.

var fetchOptions: PHFetchOptions = PHFetchOptions()
fetchOptions.sortDescriptors = [NSSortDescriptor(key: "creationDate", ascending: true)]

var fetchResult = PHAsset.fetchAssetsWithMediaType(PHAssetMediaType.Image, options: fetchOptions)

if (fetchResult.firstObject != nil) {
    var lastAsset: PHAsset = fetchResult.lastObject as! PHAsset

    PHImageManager.defaultManager().requestImageForAsset(lastAsset, targetSize: self.UploadImagePreview.bounds.size, contentMode: PHImageContentMode.AspectFill, options: PHImageRequestOptions(), resultHandler: { (result, info) -> Void in
        self.UploadImagePreview.image = result
    })
}