adobe air webcam problem - air

Question

I have been developing a simple desktop app using adobe air, html and javascript to save data to sqlite (not as, no flash builder, no flex). Is there a way that i can capture an image from my webcam and save it using these technologies ? If not what else can be done to achieve the result? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

This can be done, but it is absolutely not performance-friendly :) You will get enormous string-objects (bigger images = bigger strings). But I will tell you how I did it once.
First, you have to get the BitmapData from your webcam. This can be done by creating a BitmapData-object and using its draw()-function, as shown below:
var bmpd:BitmapData = new BitmapData(webcam.width, webcam.height);
bmpd.draw(webcam);
With this BitmapData, you can then call for getPixels(), which will return a ByteArray.
var ba:ByteArray = bmpd.getPixels();
This ByteArray is now ready for serialization. Since you are storing, it is best you store it as a string. This is most commonly done by Base64. You can use this class to implement the base64-encoding, as shown below:
var baseString:String = Base64.encodeByteArray(ba);
The above string can be stored in your sqlite and is a string-representation of your image. The bigger the image, the longer the conversion will take.
To get the image back from your sqlite, you can use the decodeByteArray()-method of the Base64-class I gave you, in combination with a loader-object. Example is shown below.
var baseString = StringFromYourSQLite;
var ba:ByteArray = Base64.decodeToByteArray(baseString);
var imageLoader:Loader = new Loader();
imageLoader.loadBytes(ba);
stage.addChild(imageLoader);
And this is how you can store and retrieve images from your database.