Capturing images in Powerapps

[SimonMeadows]

So... I have looked at every thread I can find on the Add Picture control and many others relating to media capture in powerapps, and am at a loss. I apologise if this has a slight tone of a rant but I have been reading various threads for over two hours now and am still where I started...

When an image is uploaded to the powerapp using the Add Image control it is cached in a local blob, referenced with a URI specific to the current running instance of the powerapp.

E.g.

appres://blobmanager/6ad465bf11ed406e841113f483d25d5d/2

After the app instance is closed and re-opened the cache is clear and the URI is irrelevant.

This means if you want to do anything with the image you have to save it to your external datasource.

How?

This URI is only in the scope of the running app and is not accessible from anywhere but inside the current instance of the app.

If I pass this URI to Flow to save, it is nothing more than a text string with no context so has no acces to the referenced blob.

If I save it to sharepoint as a list item it is again a text sring with no context and has no access to the referenced blob.

I hope I am missing something obvious and there is a function that will return the content of the blob instead of the URI but every thread I look at seems to end up with someone mentioning the "appres://blobmanager/" style URI, then radio silence and no answers.

I have had a look at the documentation for the Add Image control and it has a nice little example of loading pictires into a gallery and how to display them but only one line on how to save them:

• "Use the SaveData function to save the images locally or the Patch function to update a data source."

Both of these functions save the URI as a text string that becomes irrelevent when the app is closed.

Does anyone know how to get the image content for saving as a Base64 encoded string or passing to a flow to save as a file somewhere?

[KickingApps]

@SimonMeadows If you haven't already, take a look at Paul Culmsee's video.  I have implemented this method in one of my apps and it works great.

[v-xida-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @SimonMeadows,

Do you want to save the picture captured via the Add Picture control into your external data source within your app?

If you want to save the picture captured via the Add Picture control into an external data source (e.g. SP library), please check and see if the following blog would help in your scenario:

http://repointtechnologies.com/saving-images-from-powerapps-to-sharepoint/

Best regards,

Kris

[SimonMeadows]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestions but after many hours of faffing with various options I have decided that creating long convoluted flows and custom API scenarios just to save an image is a little rediculous.

I have decided to use Azure blob storage for the storage of the images then create reference links to the blobs and save them where I need to use them instead.

There is a small additional cost for the blob storage on azure but it is a much more universal way to save images and reference them where needed.

Simon