androidimagegallerymediastore

Get list of photo galleries on Android


I'm looking for: A list of the existing photo gallery names (hopefully their top thumbnail as well) The contents of the gallery (I can then load thumbnails and full size as needed)

How would I go about getting a list of the "Galleries" (don't know if that's the proper term in android for the groupings of images visible in the Gallery app...) and their contents? I need access to the gallery in it's structure without using the existing gallery display (I'm creating a totally new one, not an over layer to the photo requestor etc.)

I assume MediaStore.Images is where I need to be but I don't see anything that will give me the groupings...


Solution

  • Groupings are defined by MediaStore.Images.Media.BUCKET_DISPLAY_NAME. Here is the sample code to list the images and log their bucket name and date_taken:

    // which image properties are we querying
    String[] projection = new String[] {
            MediaStore.Images.Media._ID,
            MediaStore.Images.Media.BUCKET_DISPLAY_NAME,
            MediaStore.Images.Media.DATE_TAKEN
    };
    
    // content:// style URI for the "primary" external storage volume
    Uri images = MediaStore.Images.Media.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI;
    
    // Make the query.
    Cursor cur = managedQuery(images,
            projection, // Which columns to return
            null,       // Which rows to return (all rows)
            null,       // Selection arguments (none)
            null        // Ordering
            );
    
    Log.i("ListingImages"," query count=" + cur.getCount());
    
    if (cur.moveToFirst()) {
        String bucket;
        String date;
        int bucketColumn = cur.getColumnIndex(
            MediaStore.Images.Media.BUCKET_DISPLAY_NAME);
    
        int dateColumn = cur.getColumnIndex(
            MediaStore.Images.Media.DATE_TAKEN);
    
        do {
            // Get the field values
            bucket = cur.getString(bucketColumn);
            date = cur.getString(dateColumn);
    
            // Do something with the values.
            Log.i("ListingImages", " bucket=" + bucket 
                   + "  date_taken=" + date);
        } while (cur.moveToNext());
    
    }