How to reliably take a photo in Android?

Question

I am trying to take a photo in an Android app, convert it to JPEG, then upload it to a web service. So far I got the following:

private static final int CAMERA_REQUEST = 1888;
private void TakePhoto() {
    Intent cameraIntent = new Intent(android.provider.MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
    startActivityForResult(cameraIntent, CAMERA_REQUEST);
}

@Override
protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
    super.onActivityResult(requestCode, resultCode, data);

    switch (requestCode) {
        case CAMERA_REQUEST:
            Bitmap photo = (Bitmap) data.getExtras().get("data");

            ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            photo.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG, 90, bos);
            byte [] bitmapData = bos.toByteArray();

            char [] dataAsChar = new String(bitmapData ).toCharArray();

            URL url = new URL("http://www.foo.com/bar);
            URLConnection conn = url.openConnection();
            conn.setDoOutput(true);
            conn.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/octet-stream");

            OutputStreamWriter wr = new OutputStreamWriter(conn.getOutputStream());
            wr.write(dataAsChar);
            wr.flush();

            // Get the response
            BufferedReader rd = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream()));
            String line;
            while ((line = rd.readLine()) != null) {
                // Process line...
            }
            wr.close();
            rd.close();

            break;
    }
}

The itself seems to work, eg doesn't crash. I get in the Bitmap photo variable. I then compress it using ByteArrayOutputStream and it becomes about 5103 bytes (in the buffer). I then convert it to a char array (so that it can be sent) and the char array becomes 4758 elements. Not sure why that is (probably this line char [] dataAsChar = new String(data).toCharArray(); ). And of course once the image makes over to the other side it's corrupted.

What am I missing here?

EDIT. Per suggestion from @digitalJoel, I chucked the OutputStreamWriter and replaced with

OutputStream os = conn.getOutputStream();
os.write(data);

Answer 1

new String(bitmapData ).toCharArray() seems like a really bad idea to me. I don't think you can expect all the bytes from a JPEG to get shoved into a String without some corruption happening. So, why not just write the bytes to the OutputStream instead of wrapping it in the OutputStreamWriter?

Answer 2

You're not specifying an encoding method when you create the String from which you're getting your char array. Could Android's default String encoding method be converting multiple raw bytes into a single logical character?

Even if not, that sort of thing is why (as @digitaljoel says) building a String just to get a character array is not the greatest idea.