How to create and save specific photo album using UIActivityViewController in iOS

Question

I want to create custom photo album and save photo to specific album in iOS 7. and I found iOS save photo in an app specific album using ALAssetsLibrary.

But I don't know how to do it using UIActivityViewController.

NSArray* actItems = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: image, nil];

    UIActivityViewController *activityView = [[UIActivityViewController alloc]
                                              initWithActivityItems:actItems
                                              applicationActivities:nil];


    [activityView setCompletionHandler:^(NSString *activityType, BOOL completed)
    {

        if ([activityType isEqualToString:UIActivityTypeSaveToCameraRoll])
        {
            UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:NSLocalizedString(@"#Saved_title", nil)
                                                            message:NSLocalizedString(@"#Saved_message2", nil)
                                                           delegate:self
                                                  cancelButtonTitle:NSLocalizedString(@"OK", nil)
                                                  otherButtonTitles: nil];
            [alert show];
        }



    }];

Answer 1

I realize the question is a few months old and that the OP may have moved on, but I needed to do exactly this, but didn't find another solution, and needed to come up with my own.

It's not fool-proof, as if there are multiple copies of the video/image in Camera Roll that you're wanting to copy, it will copy all of them, which may or may not be desired. Also, for my purposes, I'm considering maintaining a persistent list of asset URLs that I've written to the custom album so that I skip that asset in the future, but I haven't yet coded it because, if the user removes the video/image from the custom album, it'd be nearly impossible to update that list without more iteration through asset groups: something I'd like to avoid.

Last disclaimer: I haven't tested this a whole ton yet, but it works for my purposes, so hopefully someone else out there can benefit from it.

I augmented Marin Todorov's ALAssetsLibrary+CustomPhotoAlbum category, which I found here: https://github.com/yusenhan/Smooth-Line-View/tree/master/ALAssetsLibrary%2BCustomPhotoAlbum. Note: there is no license information provided there, so I'm assuming that modifying the source for this category is ok.

Here is my method which sets up and displays the UIActivityViewController:

- (void)showActivitySheet:(NSString *)path {
    NSURL *newURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:path];
    NSArray *itemsToShare = @[newURL];
    UIActivityViewController *activityVC = [[UIActivityViewController alloc] initWithActivityItems:itemsToShare applicationActivities:nil];
    activityVC.excludedActivityTypes = @[UIActivityTypePrint, UIActivityTypeAssignToContact, UIActivityTypeAddToReadingList];

    // Once the OS has finished with whatever the user wants to do with it,
    // we'll begin figuring out if we need to save it to the Album, too!
    [activityVC setCompletionHandler:^(NSString *activityType, BOOL completed) {
    
        // If the user selected "Save to Camera Roll"
        if ([activityType isEqualToString:UIActivityTypeSaveToCameraRoll]) {
            
            ALAssetsLibrary *lib = [[ALAssetsLibrary alloc] init];
            NSURL *tempUrl = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:path];
                    
            // saveMovie: below is a method I added to the category, but you can use saveImage:,
            // which you'll also likely want to add some kind of parameter to so, in the category,
            // you know when you only want to copy to the Album instead of the Album AND Camera Roll
            [lib saveMovie:tempUrl toAlbum:@"CUSTOM ALBUM NAME"
                       withCompletionBlock:^(NSURL *url, NSError *error) {
                           if (error) {
                               NSLog(@"Error writing movie to custom album: %@", error.debugDescription);
                           }
                       } 
   onlyWriteToCustomAlbum:YES];
        }
    }];

    [self presentViewController:activityVC animated:YES completion:nil];
}

Here is code you can add to the saveImage: method in the ALAssetsLibrary+CustomPhotoAlbum category so you can save it to your custom Album, too! You could execute this portion only on the YES case of the BOOL which you'll want to add to the category.

NSData *dataToCompareTo = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:url]; // This data represents the image/movie which you want to save into the custom album. The one you handed to the UIActivityViewController.
    
    // Note use of self, as this is a category on ALAssetsLibrary; also, this
    // assumes that you've already written the photo to the Camera Roll, which
    // should be automatically handled by the OS, if the user hit the "Save" button
    // on the UIActivityViewController.

    // Enumerate through Camera Roll/Saved Photos group.
    [self enumerateGroupsWithTypes:ALAssetsGroupSavedPhotos
                       usingBlock:^(ALAssetsGroup *group, BOOL *stop) {
                           
                           // Enumerate the assets in each group. 
                           [group enumerateAssetsUsingBlock:^(ALAsset *result, NSUInteger index, BOOL *stop) {
                               
                               ALAssetRepresentation *rep = [result defaultRepresentation];
                               
                               // If the asset isn't the same size as the source image/movie
                               // it shouldn't be the same. Check the size first, since it
                               // is a less costly operation than byte checking the data itself.
                               if ([rep size] == [dataToCompareTo length]) {
                                   Byte *buffer = malloc([NSNumber numberWithLongLong:rep.size].unsignedLongValue);
                                   NSUInteger buffered = [rep getBytes:buffer fromOffset:0.0 length:[NSNumber numberWithLongLong:rep.size].unsignedLongValue error:nil];
                                   NSData *data = [NSData dataWithBytesNoCopy:buffer length:buffered freeWhenDone:YES];
                                   
                                   // If the buffer has more than the null-termination char, free it!  I'm doing this in case the above call to dataWithBytesNoCopy fails to free() the buffer.
                                   if (sizeof(buffer) > 4) {
                                       free(buffer);
                                   }
                                   
                                   // Ensure they are the same by comparing the NSData instances.
                                   if ([data isEqualToData:dataToCompareTo]) {
                                       NSLog(@"they are the same!!");
                                       [self addAssetURL:[rep url]
                                                 toAlbum:albumName
                                withMovieCompletionBlock:completionBlock];
                                   } else {
                                       NSLog(@"they are different");
                                   }
                               }
                           }];
                       } failureBlock:^(NSError *error) {
                           NSLog(@"Failed to write to custom album!");
                       }];

Hope it helps! TLDR? Thought so! ;-)