[CB-5942] targetWidth and targetHeight are not being interpreted consistently across platforms

• Type: Bug
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: 3.0.0, 3.1.0, 3.2.0
• Component/s: cordova-plugin-camera

Environment

iOS, WP8

• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: John M. Wargo
• Created: 29/Jan/14 22:26
• Updated: 20/Nov/15 01:46

Description

A while back I posted a question regarding Camera targetWidth & targetHeight properties and how they worked. After some discussion, the conclusion I reached was that the documentation couldn't be correct about how it worked since there was no way to determine the camera's resolution with the current API but the docs said I had to provide both parameters. I said I'd do some testing and I have finally gotten around to completing it. Here's what I discovered:

I created an application that allowed me to pass in different values for targetWidth & targetHeight when taking a picture. I tested at the following image sizes: 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 as well as setting only the targetWidth to 1024 or only the targetHeight to 768.

Here's the results:

Android

Expected	Portrait	Landscape
640x480	480x640	640x480
800x600	600x800	800x600
1024x768	768x1024	1024x768
1024x?	768x1024	1024x768
?x768	768x1024	1024x768

iOS

Expected	Portrait	Landscape
640x480	360x480	640x480
800x600	450x600	800x600
1024x768	576x768	1024x768
1024x?	2448x3264	3264x2448
?x768	2448x3264	3264x2448

Windows Phone 8

Expected	Portrait	Landscape
640x480	1836x3264	3264x1836
800x600	1836x3264	3264x1836
1024x768	1836x3264	3264x1836
1024x?	1836x3264	3264x1836
?x768	1836x3264	3264x1836

As you can see, Android properly implements the targetWidth & targetHeight properties. On iOS, it supports setting both properties, but not instances where only one is specified. Windows Phone 8 ignores the parameters completely. On iOS, when you turn the device on its side, the Camera API applies the target width or height to the wrong axis (Android does this well however).

I'm trying to test this on a BlackBerry device, but my development environment is giving me fits right now. I'll work on it in the morning and publish my results when I get them.

I would suggest that the android implementation is as expected and that the other platforms need their implementations of targetWidth & targetHeight adjusted so it works correctly. The documentation should be updated as well as it's incorrect today specifying that both properties must be provided.

If the group doesn't want to support only providing one of the properties, then I would expect that the onError callback is called when only one is provided rather than simply ignoring them as is the case with iOS and Windows Phone.

I posted my sample application and a spreadsheet with my results to https://github.com/johnwargo/camera_res_test

The concensus on the dev list is the following:

The API should never grow the image
The API should shrink the image while maintaining aspect ratio, such that both dimensions of the resized image fit within targetWidth and targetHeight.

I would propose as well that the API support only one of the parameters or both - the API should understand enough about the image file to maintain aspect ratio, the developer shouldn't have to tell it.

Issue Links

• depends upon: CB-7937 Re-factor iOS Camera plugin so that it is testable
• is related to: CB-8601 ios camera unit tests broken
• relates to: CB-1859 camera.getPicture should use scaled photo data only when it's bigger than targetWidth / targetHeight