a way to upload video to php server with AVFoundation? - objective-c

I was wondering what would be the best approach to upload a video using AVfoundation to a server in h264 format. I will be using NSURL and some form of httprequest to post data every 30 second intervals. I was wondering what would be the best way to upload if there are any established libraries to ease my life?
thank you.

You can just use NSURLConnection with a NSMutableURLRequest. Assign a NSInputStream using the
- (void)setHTTPBodyStream:(NSInputStream *)inputStream
method.
Check the documentation:
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/NSMutableURLRequest_Class/Reference/Reference.html
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/nsurlconnection_Class/Reference/Reference.html
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/NSInputStream_Class/Reference/Reference.html

Related

Play encrypted video with AVPlayer

I'm implementing an application that contains video player. For some reasons video files are encrypted with AES, and size of these files can be rather big to avoid loading it to RAM as one piece. I'm looking for some way to play it with AVPlayer.
Tried:
1) Custom NSURLProtocol as suggested here http://aptogo.co.uk/2010/07/protecting-resources/
Didn't work, I suggest that AVPlayer uses it's own and mine does not get called.
2) Use AVAsset to chop video in small chunks and then feed them to AVPlayer - failed because there's no API in AVPlayer for that.
Any workaround would be greatly appreciated :)
You have 2 options:
If targeting iOS 7 and newer the check out AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate. It allows you to do what you would with a custom NSURLProtocol but specifically for AVPlayer.
Emulate an HTTP server with support for the Range header and point the AVURLAsset to localhost.
I implemented #2 before and can provide more info if needed.
I just downloaded the Apple sample project https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/samplecode/sc1791/Listings/ReadMe_txt.html and it seems to do exactly what you want.
The delegate catch each AVURLAsset's AVAssetResourceLoader calls and makes up a brand new .m3a8 file with a custom decryption key in it.
Then it feeds the player with all .ts file URLs in the m3a8.
The project is a good overview of what it is possible to do with HLS feeds.

Windows Phone: Upload Progress

I've built a Windows Phone app that needs to upload an image to a server. I'd like to display an upload progress percentage instead of the generic progress bar.
I'm uploading the images as Byte[] to my server using a WCF service (basitHttpBinding).
Has anyone managed to do this yet?
On WebRequest or WebClient this would be easier but since you're using WCF guess we have to take another approach!
Please check if this approach will work for you!
Note that this approach uses a Stream when sending/receiving, that shouldn't be an issue given that internally it will be converted to a byte array (like you have).

Best way to write to file a large HTTP response

I'm looking for ways of writing to file the results of a web request. In languages based on the JVM or the CLR there are appropriate Stream-based techniques I'm familiar with, however I'm clueless on how could that be done in Objective-C.
What I need is essentially a way to send an HTTP request (with a custom header set) and write the HTTP response content as I receive it (due to memory constraints I can't afford to get the whole file or even a large portion of it before persisting the contents).
Ideas/suggestions/snippets?
Thanks in advance!
P.S.: I'm developing for Mac OS and I'm already using ASIHTTPRequest, if that can be of help.
Edit: I should specify that I don't want to write all of the contents returned by the server to disk unless I can write them directly at a certain offset of a file (which I'll then be able to manipulate), so anything that dumps straight to a new file or to the beginning of a file won't work for me.
There a few ways of doing it, depends on how you want to handle the responds
ASIHTTPRequest *request = [ASIHTTPRequest requestWithURL:url];
[request setDownloadDestinationPath:#"/Users/Test/Desktop/cool.html"];
with setDownloadDestinationPath: set, it'll save into temporary path, and when it finished, it'll move it to your downloadDestinationPath you set.
Or you can implement request:didReceiveData: delegate (see ASIHTTPRequestDelegate.h), and handle it yourself. This is similar to stream.
PS. I only ever use ASIHTTPRequest on iOS, not Mac OS, so I'm not entirely sure if it will work for you.

Atomic, asynchronous HTTP file POST with sensible feedback?

I've just started development on Macs and have found Cocoa to be a useful and thoughtful framework, but its HTTP functionality has me puzzled.
I have an NSURLConnection object to download a file from my webserver using the HTTP GET method. NSURLConnect's asynchronous connection is great, I get plenty of feedback, I get each chunk received as a new NSData object that I can use to atomically rebuild the file on the client end and, importantly, provide the user with a progress report: [myData length].
Uploads, however, are nowhere near as neat. You can either stick a synchronous request in its own thread or call an asynchronous request (which I believe spawns its own thread), but neither provide you with any useful feedback. There's no delegates to request data or even let me know when data is being sent. Presumably this limits me to files smaller than available memory.
My question is, therefore, is there a simple and elegant solution to HTTP POST file uploads using Cocoa that provides a good deal of feedback and the ability to read files part-by-part, rather than all at once? Or should I write my own class from low-level networking functionality?
Thanks!
You may want to look at the ASIHTTPRequest framework. I haven't used it for uploading but it looks like it has more feedback and the usage is pretty straightforward.
I decided to go with CFNetwork functions instead of NSURLConnection. There appears to be a bit more flexibility in async notifications and in specific features (authentication for instance). Unfortunately it's a bit more complicated (run loops for instance blow my mind) so I recommend you read the CFNetwork reference guide if you go this route:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Networking/Conceptual/CFNetwork/Introduction/Introduction.html
Here's a snippet of code from my POST routine, FWIW:
// Create our URL
CFStringRef url = CFSTR("Submit");
CFURLRef myURL = CFURLCreateWithString(kCFAllocatorDefault, url, baseUrl);
// Create the message request (POST)
CFStringRef requestMethod = CFSTR("POST");
CFHTTPMessageRef myRequest = CFHTTPMessageCreateRequest(kCFAllocatorDefault, requestMethod, myURL, kCFHTTPVersion1_1);
// Connect the read socket to the HTTP request stream
CFReadStreamRef myReadStream = CFReadStreamCreateForStreamedHTTPRequest(kCFAllocatorDefault, myRequest, readStream);
// TODO: why does this have to be done?
succ &= CFReadStreamSetClient(myReadStream,
kCFStreamEventOpenCompleted | kCFStreamEventCanAcceptBytes | kCFStreamEventErrorOccurred | kCFStreamEventEndEncountered,
(CFReadStreamClientCallBack) &MyReadCallBack, &myClientContext);
CFReadStreamScheduleWithRunLoop(myReadStream, CFRunLoopGetCurrent(), kCFRunLoopDefaultMode);
succ &= CFReadStreamOpen(myReadStream);
ASIHTTPRequest was originally designed just for this purpose (tracking POST progress), since in the 2.x API, this isn't possible with NSURLConnection. It will definitely be easier to integrate than rolling your own with CFNetwork, and you get lots of other stuff for free (e.g. progress tracking across multiple requests, resuming downloads etc). :)
If the files you are uploading are large, be sure to look at the options for streaming directly from disk, so you don't have to hold the data in memory.
Unfortunately, you're quite correct that NSURLConnection is weak here. The most flexible approach that I would recommend is CocoaAsyncSocket. It means rolling your own HTTP, which is unfortunate, but in most cases not that difficult. CocoaHTTPServer demonstrates how to build a full HTTP server on top of CocoaAsyncSocket, and may have a lot of useful code for your problem. I've found both of these very useful.
Another approach that may be worth investigating is WebKit. Create an invisible WebView, and loadRequest: a POST. I haven't dug into whether the estimatedChange notification system includes the time to upload or only the time to download, but it's worth a try.
You can take a look at the HTTPMessage section of my toolkit repository on github for a simple ObjC wrapper around CFHTTPMessageRef; among other things it'll hand you an NSInputStream object, which saves you thinking about plain-C callback functions.
Depending on what you're reading, you may want to take a look at the StreamingXMLParser section of the same repository for an XML (and HTML) parser which will parse data directly from said NSInputStream on your behalf.

NSURLConnection downloading poor quality JPEGs on 3G

I am downloading a JPEG image from a server and assigning it to an image object in my iPhone app using an NSURLConnection.
All works fine when I'm on a Wifi connection, but as soon as I switch to 3G, the quality of the JPEG downloaded reduces dramatically.
Has anyone else experienced this?
Does anyone know of a way to force the iPhone to download the full quality JPEG?
Thanks in advance!
Nick.
If it's the 3G provider that compresses data on the fly I don't think you can do anything about it. Download the image with Safari via 3G -> if the image looks bad (and I expect it will) then it's the provider that compresses it.
To workaround this problem zip the image on the server and unzip it in the application -> this should bypass the compression on the 3G side.
A simple trick is to use https instead of http - this appears to work on O2.
I know this question is quite old but incase this is of any use to anyone...
NSMutableURLRequest *request = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:theURL];
// Add headers to avoid mobile network operator image compression
[request setValue:#"no-cache" forHTTPHeaderField:#"Pragma"];
[request setValue:#"no-cache" forHTTPHeaderField:#"Cache-Control"];
Should stop the compression of images.
The mobile operator compresses images in order to save bandwidth, but they tend to respect these header fields, and allow you to request the uncompressed image.