Take photos

Take photos 


Android Developers

This lesson teaches how to capture a photo by delegating the work to another camera app on the device. (If you'd rather build your own camera functionality, see Controlling the Camera.)

Suppose you are implementing a crowd-sourced weather service that makes a global weather map by blending together pictures of the sky taken by devices running your client app. Integrating photos is only a small part of your application. You want to take photos with minimal fuss, not reinvent the camera. Happily, most Android-powered devices already have at least one camera application installed. In this lesson, you learn how to make it take a picture for you.

Request the camera feature
If an essential function of your application is taking pictures, then restrict its visibility on Google Play to devices that have a camera. To advertise that your application depends on having a camera, put a <uses-feature> tag in your manifest file:

<manifest ... >
    <uses-feature android:name="android.hardware.camera"
                  android:required="true" />
    ...
</manifest>

If your application uses, but does not require a camera in order to function, instead set android:required to false. In doing so, Google Play will allow devices without a camera to download your application. It's then your responsibility to check for the availability of the camera at runtime by calling hasSystemFeature(PackageManager.FEATURE_CAMERA_ANY). If a camera is not available, you should then disable your camera features.