How to know where on the SD card the images are being stored, DCIM/Camera, DCIM/100MEDIA?

Question

I have a method in my application which retrieves the last saved image in my DCIM/Camera folder and copies it to another location on the SD card. I've just tested it on another phone and found that it defaults saving to DCIM/100MEDIA. How am I able to get this path?

I ended up writing some code which looped through all the folders in the DCIM folder and retrieved the path of the lastModified() folder.

Answer 1

Looks like it is manufacturer dependent. In addition to using methods described in book, it seems also allowing the user to choose/override the default you "discover" would be an important option.

From Pro Android 3: p 579

Unfortunately, there is not a method call to tell you which directory might be used underneath the DCIM directory for Camera pictures. There are a couple of methods though to tell you where the top of the SD card is. The first is Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory() and it returns a File object for the top-level directory for the SD card.

See the following Google books link for full page text: http://books.google.com/books?id=RuN0jb4YASwC&pg=PA579&lpg=PA579

• other references:

Do all Android phones with a built-in camera use a folder called "DCIM" to store captured images?

http://androidforums.com/android-lounge/5930-definitive-androids-folder-structure.html#post239353

Answer 2

Maybe this can help you:

File picDir;            
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT > 7)
    picDir = Environment.getExternalStoragePublicDirectory(Environment.DIRECTORY_PICTURES);
else
    picDir = new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().getAbsolutePath(), "Pictures/");

Hope this can help. Based on this.