Converting the UIImage view to NSURL to upload it to Firebase

Question

I'm trying to upload an image from image view to Firebase storage.

The user will upload the image either from photo album or from camera to image view! What I want is to upload this image from image view to firebase storage.

I've tried to follow the example in the Firebase docs as here:

   let localFile: NSURL = ImageView.image


    let metadata = FIRStorageMetadata()
    metadata.contentType = "image/jpeg"

    // Upload file and metadata to the object 'images/mountains.jpg'
    let uploadTask = storage.child("images/DeviceImage.jpg").putFile(localFile, metadata: metadata);

    // Listen for state changes, errors, and completion of the upload.
    uploadTask.observeStatus(.Pause) { snapshot in
        // Upload paused
    }

    uploadTask.observeStatus(.Resume) { snapshot in
        // Upload resumed, also fires when the upload starts
    }

    uploadTask.observeStatus(.Progress) { snapshot in
        // Upload reported progress
        if let progress = snapshot.progress {
            let percentComplete = 100.0 * Double(progress.completedUnitCount) / Double(progress.totalUnitCount)
        }
    }

    uploadTask.observeStatus(.Success) { snapshot in
        // Upload completed successfully
    }

    // Errors only occur in the "Failure" case
    uploadTask.observeStatus(.Failure) { snapshot in
        guard let storageError = snapshot.error else { return }
        guard let errorCode = FIRStorageErrorCode(rawValue: storageError.code) else { return }
        switch errorCode {
        case .ObjectNotFound:
            // File doesn't exist

        case .Unauthorized:
            // User doesn't have permission to access file

        case .Cancelled:
            // User canceled the upload

            ...

        case .Unknown:
            // Unknown error occurred, inspect the server response
        }
    }

But I don't know how to convert the UIImageView into NSURL.

Here's the error I got:

Answer 1

You'll need to convert the image to a file on disk and get the url of that to upload.

let paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(.DocumentDirectory, .UserDomainMask, true)
let filePath = "\(paths[0])/MyImageName.jpg"

// Save image.
UIImageJPEGRepresentation(image, 0.90)?.writeToFile(filePath, atomically: true)

See: How do I save a UIImage to a file?

Once it is written to disk you can get a url for the file like so:

let localFile = NSURL(fileURLWithPath: filePath)

Answer 2

Instead of converting it to NSURL, you can get the PNG bytes of the selected image and upload it like this:

storage.reference().child("images/imageName.png").putData(selectedImage!.pngData()!, metadata: nil, completion: {_, error in
                guard error == nil else{
                    print("failed to upload image")
                    return
                }
            })