Image Uploading With Rhodes, RhoConnect & Rails3

Recently I working on an app project which involves uploading and transferring images from smartphones to Web and vice-versa. My stack was Rhodes, RhoConnect, Rails 3. Thought I would share pieces of code snippets that would help you get this all integrated in your RhoMobile apps.

Lets say we have an App that got Product model with some attributes along with product image.
Rails part:
Used the famous Paperclip gem and while exposing the API to RhoConnect, I used the base64.encode64 method.
[source language=”ruby”]
require ‘base64’
product= Product.new(params[:product])
product.save
if product.image_file_name != nil
product.update_attributes({:encoded_image => Base64.encode64(open(product.image.path,”rb”) { |io| io.read })})
end
[/source]
Rhodes part:
Enabled the camera capability to upload picture or take new picture.
[source language=”ruby”]
capabilities:
– camera
[/source]
Sample Take picture code from Rhodes controller
[source language=”ruby”]
def take_picture
width =100
height =100
settings = {:desired_width => width, :desired_height => height }
Camera::take_picture(url_for(:action => :camera_callback), settings)
redirect :action => :wait
end
[/source]
Sample Choose picture code from Rhodes controller
[source language=”ruby”]
def choose_picture
width =100
height =100
settings = {:desired_width => width, :desired_height => height }
Camera::take_picture(url_for(:action => :camera_callback), settings)
redirect :action => :wait
end
[/source]
Now the key thing is to encode the image and store it in image_uri attribute while camera_callback is called
[source language=”ruby”]
require ‘base64’
def camera_callback
imagebase64= Base64.encode64(open(Rho::RhoApplication::get_blob_path(@params[‘image_uri’])) { |io| io.read }).gsub(/\r/,””).gsub(/\n/,””)
@product=Product.create({:image_uri => imagebase64})
end
[/source]
RhoConnect part
Generate the RhoConnect model called Product which by default have several methods.
The code snippet from query method (check the image_uri hash)
[source language=”ruby”]
def query(params=nil)
@products=JSON.parse(RestClient.get(“http://localhost:3000/products.json”).body)
@result={}
@products.each do |product|
@result[product[“id”].to_s] = {:name => product[‘name’],:image_uri => product[‘encoded_image’]}
end if @products
@result
end
[/source]
The code snippet from create method
[source language=”ruby”]
def create(create_hash)
url = “http://localhost:3000/products.json”
product = RestClient.post( url, create_hash.to_json, :content_type => ‘application/json’)
end
[/source]
Let me know if you want me to publish a simple Android app on Google Play so that you can actually play with the whole application.