CameraRoll.getPhotos return just a few on iOS

[andresespinosapc]

Environment

Environment:
OS: Linux 4.15
Node: 10.6.0
Yarn: 1.7.0
npm: 6.1.0
Watchman: Not Found
Xcode: N/A
Android Studio: Not Found

Packages: (wanted => installed)
react: 16.3.1 => 16.3.1
react-native: https://github.com/expo/react-native/archive/sdk-29.0.0.tar.gz => 0.55.4

Description

The CameraRoll.getPhotos function only returns some photos on iOS, while it works perfectly on Android. For example, if I use the following parameters

{
  first: 100,
  assetType: 'All',
  groupTypes: 'All',
}

I only get 39 photos, while I have more than a thousand in my camera roll. I have also tried with multiple different parameters, but the result is the same (or fewer photos because of a filter).

Reproducible Demo

https://snack.expo.io/Hyw-kQa4X

• I think it must be run on a physical iOS device, because it has to access the camera roll.
• The demo prints the length of response.length, where response is the resolved value of CameraRoll.getPhotos with the parameters I mentioned earlier.

[hramos]

I just ran your Snack example on an iPhone X running iOS 11.4, and it's showing that it got 100 photos back
.

[hramos]

After tapping Load Images a few more times, it looks like it's successfully getting pages with 100 photos each.

[andresespinosapc]

Weird. I'm running it on an iPhone SE on iOS 11.4.1. Here's what I get:

(It goes back to 0 because it resets after reaching the end)

[andresespinosapc]

I've just asked a friend with the same iPhone model and iOS version as me, and he had no problems. It's really weird. Does someone have any idea why this could happen?

[radreamer]

I have the same issue, but the number of photos is equal to 17

[vohoangankhanh]

I am having the same problems but on Android

[airlaser]

This may relate to CameraRoll's underlying use of deprecated ALAssetsLibrary instead of the new PHPhotoLibrary . For example, it has trouble detecting photos and videos which are in iCloud but not stored locally.

A test -

Run

let assets = PHAsset.fetchAssets(with: .image, options: nil)
print(assets.count)

in a bridged Swift method. See what count that gives.

[hramos]

It may be that migrating to PHPhotoLibrary solves the issue, but it looks like that theory has not been put to the test yet.

@airlaser do you want to open a new separate issue to track the migration from ALAssetsLibrary to PHPhotoLibrary?

[airlaser]

Unless people's environments are starkly different from mine the switch will fix it. My app uses PHPhotoLibrary's PHAsset.fetch to get the IDs using bridge Swift code, then string manipulation to turn them into ALAssetsLibrary style URIs.

Everything else in React (Image tag, upload libraries, custom image tags, etc) will work just fine with ALAssetsLibrary URIs even if CameraRoll couldn't find them to begin with. They will not work with PHAssets. Live photo/burst get treated as their key frame single image.

I think the harder part of switching CameraRoll over is that everything else in React has to follow suit. It will require switching CameraRoll to have an option for whether it gives PHAssets or ALAssets, even if the only difference ends up being some string manipulation of the URI format.

@hramos What is the process for getting something like that done? I've never worked on React Native itself before.