React Native Camera
We all usually need a camera in our app and Wix has provided a very good library named react-native-camera-kit. Which is very easy to integrate into your app.
In this example, we will make a home screen to open Camera and In camera, we will have a capture button, a front to back camera switch button, a flash setting button, and a cancel button to close the camera. So let’s get started.
To Make a React Native App
Getting started with React Native will help you to know more about the way you can make a React Native project. We are going to use react-native init to make our React Native App. Assuming that you have node installed, you can use npm to install thereact-native-cli command line utility.
Open the terminal and go to the workspace and runnpm install -g react-native-clireact-native init ProjectNameInstallation of Dependency
To use <CameraKitCameraScreen /> we need to install react-native-camera-kit package. To install this
Open the terminal and jump into your project
1 | cd ProjectName |
Run the following command
1 | npm install react-native-camera-kit --save |
This command will copy all the dependencies into your node_module directory, You can find the directory in node_module the directory named react-native-camera-kit.
–save is optional, it is just to update the react-native-camera-kit dependency in your package.json file.
Linking of Dependency
After installing the dependencies you need to link it with your project using
1 | react-native link |
After linking the dependency if you face Could not Compile Settings File project/android/settings.gradle error while building and installing the project then you can find the solution here.
Dependency Version for this Example Used is
1 | "react-native-camera-kit": "^6.2.4" |
Permission to use the Camera for Android
We are using a Native API Camera so we need to add some permission to the AndroidManifest.xml file.
So we are going to add the following permissions in the AndroidManifest.xml
1 2 3 | <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.CAMERA"/> <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE"/> <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE"/> |
| Permission | Purpose |
|---|---|
| CAMERA | To access the camera |
| WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE | To store the content in the SD card |
| READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE | To view the content of the SD card |
On devices before SDK version 23, the permissions are automatically granted if they appear in the manifest but after SDK version 23 we have to ask run time permission also, so we will ask for permission in code also. For more about the permission, you can see this post.
Permission to use the Camera for IOS
1. Open the project CameraExample>ios>CameraExample.xcodeproj in XCode. Click on Project (CameraExample in my case) from the left sidebar and you will see multiple options in the workspace.
2. Select info tab which is info.plist
3. Click on the plus button to add a permission key “Privacy-Camera Usage Description” and a value which will be visible when permission dialog pops up.
Code to Run Camera
Open App.js in any code editor and replace the code with the following code.
App.js
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 | //This is an example code for the camera// import React from 'react'; //import react in our code. import { StyleSheet, Text, View, Alert, ActivityIndicator, PermissionsAndroid, Platform, TouchableOpacity, } from 'react-native'; //import all the basic components we are going to use. import { CameraKitCameraScreen } from 'react-native-camera-kit'; //import CameraKitCameraScreen we are going to use. export default class App extends React.Component { state = { isPermitted: false }; constructor(props) { super(props); } onPress() { var that = this; if (Platform.OS === 'android') { async function requestCameraPermission() { try { const granted = await PermissionsAndroid.request( PermissionsAndroid.PERMISSIONS.CAMERA, { title: 'CameraExample App Camera Permission', message: 'CameraExample App needs access to your camera ', } ); if (granted === PermissionsAndroid.RESULTS.GRANTED) { //If CAMERA Permission is granted //Calling the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission function requestExternalWritePermission(); } else { alert('CAMERA permission denied'); } } catch (err) { alert('Camera permission err', err); console.warn(err); } } async function requestExternalWritePermission() { try { const granted = await PermissionsAndroid.request( PermissionsAndroid.PERMISSIONS.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, { title: 'CameraExample App External Storage Write Permission', message: 'CameraExample App needs access to Storage data in your SD Card ', } ); if (granted === PermissionsAndroid.RESULTS.GRANTED) { //If WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE Permission is granted //Calling the READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission function requestExternalReadPermission(); } else { alert('WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission denied'); } } catch (err) { alert('Write permission err', err); console.warn(err); } } async function requestExternalReadPermission() { try { const granted = await PermissionsAndroid.request( PermissionsAndroid.PERMISSIONS.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, { title: 'CameraExample App Read Storage Read Permission', message: 'CameraExample App needs access to your SD Card ', } ); if (granted === PermissionsAndroid.RESULTS.GRANTED) { //If READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE Permission is granted //changing the state to re-render and open the camera //in place of activity indicator that.setState({ isPermitted: true }); } else { alert('READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission denied'); } } catch (err) { alert('Read permission err', err); console.warn(err); } } //Calling the camera permission function requestCameraPermission(); } else { this.setState({ isPermitted: true }); } } onBottomButtonPressed(event) { const captureImages = JSON.stringify(event.captureImages); if (event.type === 'left') { this.setState({ isPermitted: false }); } else { Alert.alert( event.type, captureImages, [{ text: 'OK', onPress: () => console.log('OK Pressed') }], { cancelable: false } ); } } render() { if (this.state.isPermitted) { alert(this.state.isPermitted); return ( <CameraKitCameraScreen // Buttons to perform action done and cancel actions={{ rightButtonText: 'Done', leftButtonText: 'Cancel' }} onBottomButtonPressed={event => this.onBottomButtonPressed(event)} flashImages={{ // Flash button images on: require('./assets/flashon.png'), off: require('./assets/flashoff.png'), auto: require('./assets/flashauto.png'), }} cameraFlipImage={require('./assets/flip.png')} captureButtonImage={require('./assets/capture.png')} /> ); } else { return ( <View style={styles.container}> <TouchableOpacity style={styles.button} onPress={this.onPress.bind(this)}> <Text>Open Camera</Text> </TouchableOpacity> </View> ); } } } const styles = StyleSheet.create({ container: { flex: 1, alignItems: 'center', justifyContent: 'center', backgroundColor: 'white', }, button: { alignItems: 'center', backgroundColor: '#DDDDDD', padding: 10, width: 300, marginTop: 16, }, }); |
Before running the app you need to make a directory called “assets ” to keep the images that we have used. Download and put all the images in assets as shown
To Run the React Native App
Open the terminal again and jump into your project using.cd ProjectNamereact-native run-androidreact-native run-ios (macOS only).
Android
IOS
That was the React Native Camera. If you have any doubt or you want to share something about the topic you can comment below or contact us here. There will be more posts coming soon. Stay tuned!
Hope you liked it. 🙂
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The code works fine on android but does not work properly on IOS. It seems the permission functions are only for android so the code keeps getting stuck in the try catch. Any ideas?
Hello,
I have tried it on IOS also but let me confirm if there is any update in it..
We will confirm you soon.
Mean while if you found the problem and solution for that please comment to help others..
in this package. in the galleryScreen. if i tap on image the image url is only appended to the state.
how can i append the full image object with all the attributes i.e filename, size, url etc
onTapImage(event) {
const uri = event.nativeEvent.selected;
if (this.state.images[uri]) {
delete this.state.images[uri];
} else {
this.state.images[uri] = true;
}
this.setState({ images: {…this.state.images }})
}