chriskuehl / backgroundcamera

PhoneGap plugin for taking pictures in the background on iOS.

BackgroundCamera

BackgroundCamera is a PhoneGap plugin that allows you to take pictures in the background (with no user interaction) on iOS.

The call is asynchronous, allowing you to keep the UI responsive while you wait for the picture to be taken.

Currently only the front-facing camera is supported, but it should be trivial to also support the rear camera.

BackgroundCamera has only been tested with an iPad 2 using PhoneGap 2.7.0 on iOS 6.

Usage

To take a picture, simply call backgroundCamera.takePicture(callback).

// get the backgroundCamera plugin
var backgroundCamera = cordova.require("cordova/plugin/backgroundcamera");

// take a picture asynchronously; provide a callback
backgroundCamera.takePicture(function(b64) {
    // b64 is a base64-encoded JPEG
    // it can be easily inserted into an <img>, sent to a server,
    // processed, etc.
    // 
    // insert into an image
    var img = document.getElementById("picture");
    img.src = "data:image/jpeg;base64," + b64;
});

A full working example project is included under example/ios in the source code repository. The important bits are here.

Installation

To install BackgroundCamera in your PhoneGap project,

1. Copy BackgroundCamera.h and BackgroundCamera.m into the Classes folder of your project.

2. Copy bgcamera.js into the www directory of your project (or some subdirectory).

3. Add the following entry to your config.xml file in the <plugins> section:

   <plugin name="BackgroundCamera" value="BackgroundCamera" />

4. Include bgcamera.js in your HTML pages.

License

BackgroundCamera is copyright © 2013 Chris Kuehl, with original code released under an MIT license. See LICENSE for details.