An image picker is one of the most widely used components in any app. Many popular apps, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc., have an image picker that enables users to select files from their device to use as a profile picture or share with their friends.
The most common use case for an image picker in a mobile app is to set an avatar for the user profile. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to create an image picker in Flutter. We’ll build an example Flutter app that enables the user to either select a photo from the gallery or take a photo from the device’s camera.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
image_picker
?image_picker
pluginimage_picker
?Coding an image picker widget in Flutter from scratch would be tedious. Flutter comes with an image picker plugin for picking images from the device gallery or taking new pictures from the camera.
The image_picker
plugin exposes some helpful methods from the ImagePicker
class it exports:
import 'package:image_picker/image_picker.dart'; ImagePicker picker = ImagePicker();
The picker
instance has public methods that we’ll call to open the image selection dialog. Let’s look at these methods.
pickImage
XFile? image = await picker.pickImage(source: ImageSource.gallery);
The pickImage
method opens the choose dialog and displays the phone’s gallery from which to select the image. The source
arg states where the image is to be picked from.
Here, the source
is set to ImageSource.gallery
, so the image is selected from the user’s gallery.
XFile? image = await picker.pickImage(source: ImageSource.camera);
In the example above, the image is taken from the device camera. This method opens the camera and picks the picture snapped by the user. The source: ImageSource.camera
arg is what opens the device camera.
pickVideo
XFile? image = await picker.pickVideo(source: ImageSource.gallery);
This method opens a choose dialog to pick a video from the phone’s gallery. You would use the pickVideo
method when you want a video to be picked either from the gallery or from the phone’s video camera. The arg source: ImageSource.gallery
causes the video to be picked from the phone’s gallery.
XFile? photo = await picker.pickVideo(source: ImageSource.camera);
This method allows the user to pick a video from the camera. The arg source: ImageSource.camera
opens the phone’s video camera so the user can record the video. The recorded video is then used as the picked video.
pickMultiImage
List<XFile>? images = await picker.pickMultiImage(source: ImageSource.gallery);
pickMultiImage
enables the user to pick multiple images. The arg source: ImageSource.gallery
allows us to pick the images from the phone’s gallery.
List<XFile>? photos = await picker.pickMultiImage(source: ImageSource.camera);
Now that we’ve reviewed the methods in the image_picker
plugin, let’s build an example Flutter image picker app to see how they work in practice.
Before we start, make sure you have the following tools and binaries already installed in your machine.
flutter
, which enables us to do these things from the terminalNow that we’re done installing the necessary tools and binaries, it’s time to build our Flutter image picker example app.
First, let’s scaffold a Flutter project:
flutter create imagepickerprj
This creates a Flutter project in a folder called imagepickerprj
. A series of commands will cascade down our terminal. At the end of the terminal, you’ll see instructions for running the newly generated project:
In order to run your application, type: $ cd imagepickerprj $ flutter run To enable null safety, type: $ cd imagepickerprj $ dart migrate --apply-changes Your application code is in imagepickerprj/lib/main.dart.
We won’t run it now, but let’s move it inside the folder:
cd imagepickerprj
image_picker
pluginThe next step is to add the image_picker
plugin to our Flutter project.
Open the pubspec.yaml
file and add the image_picker
to the dependencies
section:
dependencies: flutter: sdk: flutter image_picker: ^0.8.2
If you’re using VS Code, it will automatically pull in the image_picker
once you save the pubspec.yaml
file. If you’re not using VS Code run the following command to pull in the latest added dependency:
flutter pub get
In our imagepickerprj
project, our main file resides in the lib/
folder. This is the main.dart
file, which is the entry point of any Flutter project/app. So that is where we’ll start to add most of our code.
Flutter has some code set for us already, but we won’t need it except in the MyApp
widget. Let’s start there:
void main() { runApp(MyApp()); } class MyApp extends StatelessWidget { // This widget is the root of your application. @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return MaterialApp( title: 'Flutter Demo', theme: ThemeData( primarySwatch: Colors.blue, ), home: HomePage(), ); } }
Our Flutter image picker app will have two screens:
HomePage
will list two buttons: Pick Image from Gallery
, and Pick Image from Camera
. The Pick Image from Gallery
will open an ImageFromGalleryEx
screen where we can pick an image from our gallery, while Pick Image from Camera
will open an ImageFromGalleryEx
screen where we can take a picture from our camera and use the image as the picked imageImageFromGalleryEx
will handle picking images from both the gallery and the camera. It will know what to handle based on the source type sent to it. It will also display the picked imageNow let’s code them.
HomePage
enum ImageSourceType { gallery, camera } class HomePage extends StatelessWidget { void _handleURLButtonPress(BuildContext context, var type) { Navigator.push(context, MaterialPageRoute(builder: (context) => ImageFromGalleryEx(type))); } @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return Scaffold( appBar: AppBar( title: Text("Image Picker Example"), ), body: Center( child: Column( children: [ MaterialButton( color: Colors.blue, child: Text( "Pick Image from Gallery", style: TextStyle( color: Colors.white70, fontWeight: FontWeight.bold), ), onPressed: () { _handleURLButtonPress(context, ImageSourceType.gallery); }, ), MaterialButton( color: Colors.blue, child: Text( "Pick Image from Camera", style: TextStyle( color: Colors.white70, fontWeight: FontWeight.bold), ), onPressed: () { _handleURLButtonPress(context, ImageSourceType.camera); }, ), ], ), )); } }
We have an enum, ImageSourceType
, that holds the image source types, gallery, and camera.
In the HomePage
widget, we have a method, _handleURLButtonPress
. This method uses the arg type
, which bears any values of the ImageSourceType
. It opens the ImageFromGalleryEx
widget, passing in the image source type to the widget class.
In the build
method, we see that it renders two buttons, as we stated earlier: Pick Image from Gallery
, and Pick Image from Camera
. Each button has an onPressed
event set on it. The events call the _handleURLButtonPress
method when the buttons are pressed.
The Pick Image from Gallery
button passes the ImageSourceType.gallery
to the ImageFromGalleryEx
widget, telling it that we will pick an image from the gallery. The Pick Image from Camera
button passes the ImageSourceType.camera
to the ImageFromGalleryEx
widget, telling it to open the camera of the phone and take the snapped picture as the selected image.
Now, let’s code the ImageFromGalleryEx
widget.
ImageFromGalleryEx
class ImageFromGalleryEx extends StatefulWidget { final type; ImageFromGalleryEx(this.type); @override ImageFromGalleryExState createState() => ImageFromGalleryExState(this.type); } class ImageFromGalleryExState extends State<ImageFromGalleryEx> { var _image; var imagePicker; var type; ImageFromGalleryExState(this.type); @override void initState() { super.initState(); imagePicker = new ImagePicker(); } @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return Scaffold( appBar: AppBar( title: Text(type == ImageSourceType.camera ? "Image from Camera" : "Image from Gallery")), body: Column( children: <Widget>[ SizedBox( height: 52, ), Center( child: GestureDetector( onTap: () async { var source = type == ImageSourceType.camera ? ImageSource.camera : ImageSource.gallery; XFile image = await imagePicker.pickImage( source: source, imageQuality: 50, preferredCameraDevice: CameraDevice.front); setState(() { _image = File(image.path); }); }, child: Container( width: 200, height: 200, decoration: BoxDecoration( color: Colors.red[200]), child: _image != null ? Image.file( _image, width: 200.0, height: 200.0, fit: BoxFit.fitHeight, ) : Container( decoration: BoxDecoration( color: Colors.red[200]), width: 200, height: 200, child: Icon( Icons.camera_alt, color: Colors.grey[800], ), ), ), ), ) ], ), ); } }
Here, we have ImageFromGalleryEx
, a stateful widget, and ImageFromGalleryExState
, which holds the state of the ImageFromGalleryEx
widget.
Inside the ImageFromGalleryExState
widget, we have the following variables:
_image
holds the picked image, whether from the gallery or from the cameraimagePicker
holds the instance of the ImagePicker
classtype
holds the type of image source to be used by the widget. It is passed to the widget from the HomePage
widgetWe also have an initState
method, which is inserted into the widget tree first. We use this method to initialize and create the instance of the ImagePicker
class and then assign it to the imagePicker
variable.
Inside the build
method is the Container
widget, which is a child to the Center
widget. We render the Image.file
based on the condition of the _image
variable. If the _image
is not null or undefined, then we know it has an image then we render the Image.file
widget by passing the _image
variable to it.
This Image.file
is a widget that is used to render images from the local storage of a device.
If there is nothing in the _image
variable, we render the Container
widget. This Container
displays a camera icon.
The GestureDetector
is the parent to all these widgets. It has an onTap
event registered to it. This event is fired when the widgets inside this GestureDetector
are tapped on. The onTap
handler calls the pickImage
method from the imagePicker
instance. It deduces the source of the image from the type
variable and passes it to the pickImage
method. It then passes the quality of the image (imageQuality: 50
) and, lastly, the preferred camera device preferredCameraDevice: CameraDevice.front
. This causes it to choose the front camera of our phone.
Now, pickImage
returns an XFile
instance. We reference the image.path
from the XFile
instance image
returned and pass it to File
to create a File
instance from it. This XFile
instance is what we set to the _image
state via:
setState(() { _image = File(image.path); });
This will cause the ImageFromGalleryExState
to rerender and the Image.file
will display the image in the _image
variable.
Now that we’re finished with the code, let’s test-run our app.
Open your Android Emulator and, from your terminal, run the following command:
flutter run
This will compile and build the project and then run the app inside your Android Emulator.
If you’re using VS Code, you can either run the above command or simply right-click the lib/main.dart
in your editor and then click either run Without Debugging
or Start Debugging
.
The app will open up in your Android Emulator.
HomePage
:
Pick image from gallery:
Pick image from camera:
We learned a lot in this tutorial. We started by introducing common use cases for the Flutter image picker component. Then, we introduced the image_picker
plugin for Flutter. We walked through how to initialize the ImagePicker
class of the image_picker
plugin and reviewed the methods in the ImagePicker
class.
Finally, we built a Flutter project to demonstrate how to use the image_picker
plugin in a real-world scenario.
Find the source code for this project on GitHub.
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