Open an application from a background app in iOS?

Question

I have an application that runs in the background, I need it to pseudo randomly take a picture using the forward facing camera and send that to a database.

A possible solution I thought of was to use URL schemes to open another application, which will take the picture and send it, then use another URL scheme to open the background application back up. Does anyone know if this is possible?

Or perhaps there is a better solution.

Answer 1

It is not possible for an iOS application in the background to initialize, utilize, or grab photos from the camera hardware, let alone store or upload them to a local database.

Not only is this a security risk, but it poses a potential privacy invasion, and is just plain creepy. Besides, background apps only stay alive for 10 minutes or so, so even if this activity were possible, sustaining it would be impossible.

However, it is possible to use the camera directly from an active app without having to delegate the task to another application (perhaps you are thinking a little too much like an Android developer :p). Take a look at UIImagePickerController .

Answer 2

There's a very limited set of actions background applications can do—GPS, audio, phone & VOIP calls, and a couple of others. Accessing the camera is not one of those allowed actions, so you can't take a picture in the background.

As an alternative, you could set up a notification system to alert the user that it's time to take a picture (for whatever reason), and if they choose to open the app it could do your required actions then.