Android photo picker Cordova plugin, or alternatives to cordova-plugin-camera for photo picking?

[graemian]

Hi,

I was using cordova-plugin-camera to pick photos. Google Play rejected my most recent update, saying that I need to switch to Android Photo Picker.

Is there an Android Photo Picker Cordova plugin?

I read on the cordova-plugin-camera issue tracker that the READ_MEDIA_IMAGES and READ_MEDIA_VIDEO permissions have been dropped in the newest version (8.0.0) to make it compatible with Google Play. I tried it, but it still asks for the permission and uses the previous photo picker rather than Android Photo Picker. Am I doing something wrong?

If not, what alternatives do I have? I thought that someone would have made an Android Photo Picker Cordova plugin, but I wasn't able to find one.

I'm tagging the relevant issues and people in the hope that they can help: @breautek @ravi-yk @dpalou apache/cordova-plugin-camera#889 apache/cordova-plugin-camera#866

Thanks,
Graeme

[breautek]

I read on the cordova-plugin-camera issue tracker that the READ_MEDIA_IMAGES and READ_MEDIA_VIDEO permissions have been dropped in the newest version (8.0.0) to make it compatible with Google Play. I tried it, but it still asks for the permission and uses the previous photo picker rather than Android Photo Picker. Am I doing something wrong?

Considering that v8 did completely drop those permissions, either you're not actually running the latest plugin code, or you have another plugin inserting those permission declarations and requesting them.

I don't know how you've updated your plugin(s) but one common gotcha is they have to be removed and re-added. Simply npm installing the new plugin is not enough to get the new version.

cordova plugin remove cordova-plugin-camera
cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-camera@8

On the photo picker, the camera plugin doesn't use it because it uses the camera intent, to open the camera app. Most camera applications will allow you to pick from a gallery as well (in which they'll do via the photo picker, or may have their own custom UI if the camera app itself has permissions to manage media files).

After confirming that v8 is installed, I'd run cordova preprae android to ensure that the native android project is completely up to date, then inspect /platforms/android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml. It should NOT have READ_MEDIA_IMAGES or any other READ_MEDIA_* permissions declared. If you do, then scan your /plugins folder for references of READ_MEDIA to try to determine where those permissions are coming from.

[GitToTheHub]

Maybe a tip would also to delete the android platform and add it again.

[jcesarmobile]

The Camera plugin uses the Camera intent when using the CAMERA sourceType, when using PHOTOLIBRARY/SAVEDPHOTOALBUM sourceType it uses an Intent.ACTION_GET_CONTENT, in those cases the photo picker could be used instead.
But as everything Google is launching lately, the photo picker is buggy and doesn't provide as good user experience as they claim.
Also loses features such as getting exif information, so if replaced it would be a breaking change on the plugin.

[graemian]

Thanks, I'm using Cordova via Meteor, so I think the old version of the camera plug was still in my project somehow. Deleting the whole Cordova build folder fixed the problem.

What created some confusion for me was that I couldn't quite figure out whether the camera plugin had been updated to support Android Photo Picker or not.

The Capacitor camera plugin mentions it specifically in README.md:

When picking existing images from the device gallery, the Android Photo Picker component is now used.

Perhaps we could do the same? I could send a pull request?