iOS 7 Programming Cookbook

15.6. Retrieving Photos and Videos from the Photo Library

Problem

You want users to be able to pick a photo or a video from their photo library and use it in your application.

Solution

Use the UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypePhotoLibrary value for the source type of your UIImagePickerController and the kUTTypeImage or kUTTypeMovie value, or both, for the media type, like so:

- (BOOL) isPhotoLibraryAvailable{

    return [UIImagePickerController isSourceTypeAvailable:
            UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypePhotoLibrary];

}

- (BOOL) canUserPickVideosFromPhotoLibrary{

    return [self
            cameraSupportsMedia:(__bridge NSString *)kUTTypeMovie
            sourceType:UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypePhotoLibrary];

}

- (BOOL) canUserPickPhotosFromPhotoLibrary{

    return [self
            cameraSupportsMedia:(__bridge NSString *)kUTTypeImage
            sourceType:UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypePhotoLibrary];

}

- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated{
    [super viewDidAppear:animated];

    static BOOL beenHereBefore = NO;

    if (beenHereBefore){
        /* Only display the picker once as the viewDidAppear: method gets
         called whenever the view of our view controller gets displayed */
        return;
    } else {
        beenHereBefore = YES;
    }

    if ([self isPhotoLibraryAvailable]){

        UIImagePickerController *controller =
        [[UIImagePickerController alloc] init];

        controller.sourceType = UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypePhotoLibrary;

        NSMutableArray *mediaTypes = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];

        if ([self canUserPickPhotosFromPhotoLibrary]){
            [mediaTypes addObject:(__bridge NSString *)kUTTypeImage ...