Retrieve EXIF data from gallery image in onActivityResult

Question

Currently I am getting an image back from the gallery and populating an imageField with it. I am attempting to pull location information from the image, assuming it exists, but all I keep getting is null values.

I know the image I am testing with has entries for latitude and longitude in its EXIF data.

I've tried everything I can find online and nothing is working. I believe the problem lies in the improper parameter being sent to the ExifInterface. Here's what I've got right now:

...

else if (requestCode == REQUEST_IMAGE_FROM_GALLERY) {
        try {
            Uri selectedImage = data.getData();
            String currentImage = selectedImage.getPath()
            + File.separator + getFileName(selectedImage);
....

Then initialize the ExifInterface:

....

try {
    ExifInterface ei = new ExifInterface(currentImage);
    imageLatitude = ei.getAttribute(ExifInterface.TAG_GPS_LATITUDE);
    imageLongitude = ei.getAttribute(ExifInterface.TAG_GPS_LONGITUDE);
....

But imageLatitude and imageLongitude are returning null. I've even gone so far as to replace the parameter sent into ExifInterface as the full path to the image ( /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/Camera/IMG_20150119_170010.jpg ) but still getting null values.

What exactly is supposed to be passed into ExifInterface and, if I'm passing in the correct parameter, why am I getting null values?

Answer 1

I ended up getting it to work using this method:

private String getRealPathFromURI(Uri contentURI, Activity activity) {
    Cursor cursor = activity.getContentResolver()
                    .query(contentURI, null, null, null, null);
    if (cursor == null) { // Source is Dropbox or other similar local file
        // path
        return contentURI.getPath();
    } else {
        cursor.moveToFirst();
        int idx = cursor.getColumnIndex(MediaStore.Images.ImageColumns.DATA);
        return cursor.getString(idx);
    }
}

See it in use here:

if (requestCode == REQUEST_IMAGE_FROM_GALLERY) {
        try {
            Uri selectedImage = data.getData();
            String currentImageFile = getRealPathFromURI(selectedImage, this);

            ExifInterface ei = new ExifInterface(currentImageFile);

This provided a proper ExifInterface that allowed me to pull the desired data from the image (where it existed).

Thanks for the input everyone.

Answer 2

Maybe the image path you passed to ExifInterface is invalid, you can check it by using the code:

File file = new File(currentImage); 
if(file.exists()){ 
// print file exist
}else{
 // print file not exist.
}

If it's the problem, you can solve it by pass a valid image path. If it's not the problem you can debug your code and see the attributes in the ExifInterface ei object by adding a breakpoint before the following code:

imageLatitude = ei.getAttribute(ExifInterface.TAG_GPS_LATITUDE);