PHAsset returned from fetchAssetsWithALAssetURLs: is always nil when choosing a photo from the "My Photo Stream" album using UIImagePickerController

Question

I am using a UIImagePickerController to let the user choose a photo or video to share in the app. When the user chooses a media item in their Library, I execute this code in one of the UIImagePickerController's delegate methods:

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

PHAsset *asset;
if ([info[@"UIImagePickerControllerMediaType"] isEqualToString:@"public.movie"]) {
    // Video
    asset = [[PHAsset fetchAssetsWithALAssetURLs:@[info[@"UIImagePickerControllerReferenceURL"]] options:nil] lastObject];

} else if ([info[@"UIImagePickerControllerMediaType"] isEqualToString:@"public.image"]) {
    // Photo
    PHFetchResult *result = [PHAsset fetchAssetsWithALAssetURLs:@[info[@"UIImagePickerControllerReferenceURL"]] options:nil];
    asset = [[PHAsset fetchAssetsWithALAssetURLs:@[info[@"UIImagePickerControllerReferenceURL"]] options:nil] lastObject];  
   }
}

Both if statements work fine for both photo and video, except for when you select an item from the album titled "My Photo Stream".

When you select an item from "My Photo Stream", the returned PHAsset is always nil.

I found the following question that appears to have an answer with a working solution: ALAssetsLibrary assetForURL: always returning nil for photos in "My Photo Stream" in iOS 8.1

But the above link uses the AssetsLibrary framework which is no longer recommended by Apple:

"In iOS 8.0 and later, use the Photos framework instead of the Assets Library framework. The Photos framework provides more features and better performance for working with a user’s photo library. See Photos Framework Reference."

I need to be able to return PHAsset objects for the media items in the "My Photo Stream" album. Right now the reference URL that's returned by the UIImagePickerController in the info dictionary is a valid URL that logs in the console, but when using this URL, a valid PHAsset object is never returned.

Here is an example of a reference URL that is returned in the didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo: delegate method's info dictionary:

assets-library://asset/asset.JPG?id=DCF5C6E5-B4F4-4E61-9C4B-CC63E104BF2B&ext=JPG

Answer 1

It's a bug and seems to be fixed in the latest iOS 8.2x betas.

Answer 2

It's unbelievable but as of iOS 10.3.3 the bug persists and it looks like it was fixed by only iOS 11...

In order to cover iOS 10 and below I'm using fetchAssets of PHAsset with info dictionary returned from didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo delegate method:

PHAsset.fetchAssets(withALAssetURLs: [info["UIImagePickerControllerReferenceURL"] as! URL], options: nil)

Remember that this returns an array of results.