Can't upload video from camera roll

[maltokyo]

Only can upload photos. Can't upload any videos or other filetypes.
(even in the beta version, which I tried also)

[edit: this report was on iOS; edited title based on follow-up report in later comment.]

[edit: see below for a proposed solution that should hopefully be pretty easy?]

[astyltsvig]

I cant either do that from android

[gnprice]

Hi! Thanks for the reports.

I just tested, and this works for me. (On Android 10 with v26.20.143, the latest.) @maltokyo @astyltsvig can you say in more detail what steps you try, and what result you see?

One thing that may confound this is #2684. Videos tend to be much bigger than photos, so they can naturally take some time to upload (often like 10 seconds, potentially much longer), depending on the speed of your connection to the Internet and to your Zulip server. We ought to show something like a progress bar while that's happening, but we currently don't and instead it looks like nothing happened at all, until the whole file finishes uploading; that's #2684.

[chrisbobbe]

This may depend on work in #2887, which has become stale.

If the way is clear, I can work on adding video support, as I'm familiar with both react-native-image-picker and react-native-image-crop-picker (which #2887 proposes to introduce). I know it's possible to get video from the media library and directly from the camera with some combination of these libraries — on iOS — with React Native (with a few hiccups like ivpusic/react-native-image-crop-picker#818); the details will come back to me if I start working on this, and I can see how it goes with Android.

[gnprice]

I just reproduced this on iOS -- specifically on an iPhone XR running iOS 13.3 and Zulip 26.27.150.

• I went and recorded a short video from the camera app.
• Then went to Zulip, opened a conversation, and hit the "plus" icon and the "image" icon, to select something to upload from the camera roll.
• The UI showed me all the photos in the camera roll, but not the video I'd just taken.

This looks like we're just not using the right API on iOS to say "please let the user select a photo or video from the camera roll" -- we're probably instead invoking the API in a way that says "please let the user select specifically a photo from the camera roll".

The relevant code in our app is in src/compose/ComposeMenu.js, specifically in handleImagePicker. It looks like this:

import * as ImagePicker from 'react-native-image-picker';
// ...

  handleImagePicker = () => {
    ImagePicker.launchImageLibrary(
      {
        quality: 1.0,
        noData: true,
        storageOptions: {
          skipBackup: true,
          path: 'images',
        },
      },
      this.handleImagePickerResponse,
    );
  };

So the fix might be as simple as changing those options we pass to that launchImageLibrary function from react-native-image-picker. In particular, from a quick look at its API docs, we should likely be passing mediaType: 'mixed'.

The next steps for someone to try to resolve this would be to

• reproduce the issue in a development version on iOS
• try adding that option and see if it works
• if so, test that things still work right on Android too after that change.

[gnprice]

We also just had another report that this didn't work on Android, with an interesting detail:

About attaching videos actually even here on android I only see images listed when we use send image option, we use the send file option to send videos

Maybe "send file" is what I used when I tried this earlier (#3624 (comment)) on Android and it worked for me? If so then that actually makes more sense -- I'd hope for this react-native-image-picker library to have the same behavior in this respect on Android vs. iOS.

Anyway, the steps I posted just above still apply, except you can probably try either Android or iOS first before testing the change on the other. Either way, be sure to test you can reproduce the issue before adding a fix 🙂

[rk-for-zulip]

Unfortunately, mediaType: 'mixed' is not available on Android until react-native-image-picker v2.0.0; prior to that, only 'photo' and 'video' were available options on Android. (v1.1.0 docs.)

Fortunately, using it anyway it doesn't break anything – I've just tested mediaType: 'mixed' on Android for both sending an image (IconImage) and taking a picture (IconCamera) on Android, and there was no change in behavior. (That is, only images could be selected or sent.)

[chrisbobbe]

until react-native-image-picker v2.0.0

We're now on 2.3.4 (with plans to upgrade further). Looks like the current main branch shows support for mediaType: 'mixed' on both iOS and Android, so I'd expect a fix to be pretty simple: https://github.com/react-native-image-picker/react-native-image-picker#options

[chrisbobbe]

I'd expect a fix to be pretty simple

There's a small problem: on the current latest react-native-image-picker (4.3.0), the response from the image picker doesn't include fileName for videos, so our code fails. The fix should be pretty simple—just include that field—and I've sent a PR: react-native-image-picker/react-native-image-picker#1880 . With that change, it works as I'd expect with mediaType: 'mixed', on iOS. (Haven't tested on Android yet.)

Fixed in react-native-image-picker/react-native-image-picker@d55c53f, released in v4.4.0! 🎉

[chrisbobbe]

I'd expect a fix to be pretty simple

I've just filed react-native-image-picker/react-native-image-picker#1881 for another issue, then maybe it'll be simple? 🤞

[Komal7209]

@chrisbobbe Is this issue assigned to someone else or still open to work because as per above conversation , I'm unable to get that is it resolved or not?

[chrisbobbe]

This issue has gotten stalled waiting for an upstream PR (current status here); I'd recommend choosing a different issue to work on.

[alya]

@Komal7209 please see https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/overview/contributing.html#picking-an-issue-to-work-on. I highly recommend reading through that entire page as you're getting started. Thanks!

[gnprice]

Another user request for this recently:
https://chat.zulip.org/#narrow/stream/48-mobile/topic/.233624.20video.20upload/near/1436542

[RealHarshAgarwal1]

Hey everyone I'm new to open-source can anyone guide me on how I can get started I just searched good first issue and got here I also forked zulip mobile repo

[alya]

Welcome @RealHarshAgarwal1 ! Please go through the Zulip contributor guide, as well as the mobile-specific instructions at https://github.com/zulip/zulip-mobile#contributing.

[marshallmassengill]

Any update on this that can be provided? This is a major issue for us in adopting Zulip at the moment. Are there any workarounds via plugins for uploading videos?

[chrisbobbe]

We've had another request for this: https://chat.zulip.org/#narrow/stream/48-mobile/topic/iOS.20issues/near/1611128