Converting a photo data to nsstring returns nil

Question

I'm allowing the users of my app to either take a pic or select one from their library. When selected I need to get the images' data and convert it to a string so I can send it to a web service.

The problem I'm currently having is that [NSString initWithData:] is returning nil when I have the encoding set to UTF8. I need to set it to UTF8 for the XML message.

NSString *dataString = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:UIImageJPEGRepresentation(theImage, 1.0) encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];

Thanks for any advice!

Answer 1

You can't convert an UIImage to NSString by using initWithData:encoding: method. This method is only for converting an string's data to NSString (an Text File for example).

If you are trying to convert any kind of binary data to NSString, there are some kind of encoding available. Base64 is widely used. Also your server should have the ability to decode what you've sent.

In addition, in most cases, send an image to server just need to POST it in binary as it used to be.