image_picker_for_web

A web implementation of image_picker.

Limitations on the web platform

Since Web Browsers don‘t offer direct access to their users’ file system, this plugin provides a PickedFile abstraction to make access uniform across platforms.

The web version of the plugin puts network-accessible URIs as the path in the returned PickedFile.

URL.createObjectURL()

The PickedFile object in web is backed by URL.createObjectUrl Web API, which is reasonably well supported across all browsers:

Data on support for the bloburls feature across the major browsers from caniuse.com

However, the returned path attribute of the PickedFile points to a network resource, and not a local path in your users' drive. See Use the plugin below for some examples on how to use this return value in a cross-platform way.

input file “accept”

In order to filter only video/image content, some browsers offer an accept attribute in their input type="file" form elements:

Data on support for the input-file-accept feature across the major browsers from caniuse.com

This feature is just a convenience for users, not validation.

Users can override this setting on their browsers. You must validate in your app (or server) that the user has picked the file type that you can handle.

input file “capture”

In order to “take a photo”, some mobile browsers offer a capture attribute:

Data on support for the html-media-capture feature across the major browsers from caniuse.com

Each browser may implement capture any way they please, so it may (or may not) make a difference in your users' experience.

pickImage()

The arguments maxWidth, maxHeight and imageQuality are not supported for gif images. The argument imageQuality only works for jpeg and webp images.

pickVideo()

The argument maxDuration is not supported on the web.

Usage

Import the package

This package is endorsed, which means you can simply use image_picker normally. This package will be automatically included in your app when you do.

Use the plugin

You should be able to use package:image_picker almost as normal.

Once the user has picked a file, the returned PickedFile instance will contain a network-accessible URL (pointing to a location within the browser).

The instance will also let you retrieve the bytes of the selected file across all platforms.

If you want to use the path directly, your code would need look like this:

...
if (kIsWeb) {
  Image.network(pickedFile.path);
} else {
  Image.file(File(pickedFile.path));
}
...

Or, using bytes:

...
Image.memory(await pickedFile.readAsBytes())
...