How do I record audio on iPhone with AVAudioRecorder?

Question

Now that iPhone 3.0 SDK is public, I think I can ask this question for those of you that have already been playing with the 3.0 SDK. I want to record audio in my application, but I want to use AVAudioRecorder and not the older way of recording like the example SpeakHere shows. There are not any examples of how to best do this in the iPhone Dev Center and only reference to the classes. I am a newbie at iPhone development, so I am looking for a simple sample to get me started.

Answer 1

Actually, there are no examples at all. Here is my working code. Recording is triggered by the user pressing a button on the navBar. The recording uses cd quality (44100 samples), stereo (2 channels) linear pcm. Beware: if you want to use a different format, especially an encoded one, make sure you fully understand how to set the AVAudioRecorder settings (read carefully the audio types documentation), otherwise you will never be able to initialize it correctly. One more thing. In the code, I am not showing how to handle metering data, but you can figure it out easily. Finally, note that the AVAudioRecorder method deleteRecording as of this writing crashes your application. This is why I am removing the recorded file through the File Manager. When recording is done, I save the recorded audio as NSData in the currently edited object using KVC.

#define DOCUMENTS_FOLDER [NSHomeDirectory() stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"Documents"]


- (void) startRecording{

UIBarButtonItem *stopButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"Stop" style:UIBarButtonItemStyleBordered  target:self action:@selector(stopRecording)];
self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem = stopButton;
[stopButton release];

AVAudioSession *audioSession = [AVAudioSession sharedInstance];
NSError *err = nil;
[audioSession setCategory :AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayAndRecord error:&err];
if(err){
    NSLog(@"audioSession: %@ %d %@", [err domain], [err code], [[err userInfo] description]);
    return;
}
[audioSession setActive:YES error:&err];
err = nil;
if(err){
    NSLog(@"audioSession: %@ %d %@", [err domain], [err code], [[err userInfo] description]);
    return;
}

recordSetting = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];

[recordSetting setValue :[NSNumber numberWithInt:kAudioFormatLinearPCM] forKey:AVFormatIDKey];
[recordSetting setValue:[NSNumber numberWithFloat:44100.0] forKey:AVSampleRateKey]; 
[recordSetting setValue:[NSNumber numberWithInt: 2] forKey:AVNumberOfChannelsKey];

[recordSetting setValue :[NSNumber numberWithInt:16] forKey:AVLinearPCMBitDepthKey];
[recordSetting setValue :[NSNumber numberWithBool:NO] forKey:AVLinearPCMIsBigEndianKey];
[recordSetting setValue :[NSNumber numberWithBool:NO] forKey:AVLinearPCMIsFloatKey];



// Create a new dated file
NSDate *now = [NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSinceNow:0];
NSString *caldate = [now description];
recorderFilePath = [[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/%@.caf", DOCUMENTS_FOLDER, caldate] retain];

NSURL *url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:recorderFilePath];
err = nil;
recorder = [[ AVAudioRecorder alloc] initWithURL:url settings:recordSetting error:&err];
if(!recorder){
    NSLog(@"recorder: %@ %d %@", [err domain], [err code], [[err userInfo] description]);
    UIAlertView *alert =
    [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle: @"Warning"
                               message: [err localizedDescription]
                              delegate: nil
                     cancelButtonTitle:@"OK"
                     otherButtonTitles:nil];
    [alert show];
    [alert release];
    return;
}

//prepare to record
[recorder setDelegate:self];
[recorder prepareToRecord];
recorder.meteringEnabled = YES;

BOOL audioHWAvailable = audioSession.inputIsAvailable;
if (! audioHWAvailable) {
    UIAlertView *cantRecordAlert =
    [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle: @"Warning"
                               message: @"Audio input hardware not available"
                              delegate: nil
                     cancelButtonTitle:@"OK"
                     otherButtonTitles:nil];
    [cantRecordAlert show];
    [cantRecordAlert release]; 
    return;
}

// start recording
[recorder recordForDuration:(NSTimeInterval) 10];

}

- (void) stopRecording{

[recorder stop];

NSURL *url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath: recorderFilePath];
NSError *err = nil;
NSData *audioData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:[url path] options: 0 error:&err];
if(!audioData)
    NSLog(@"audio data: %@ %d %@", [err domain], [err code], [[err userInfo] description]);
[editedObject setValue:[NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:url] forKey:editedFieldKey];   

//[recorder deleteRecording];


NSFileManager *fm = [NSFileManager defaultManager];

err = nil;
[fm removeItemAtPath:[url path] error:&err];
if(err)
    NSLog(@"File Manager: %@ %d %@", [err domain], [err code], [[err userInfo] description]);



UIBarButtonItem *startButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"Record" style:UIBarButtonItemStyleBordered  target:self action:@selector(startRecording)];
self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem = startButton;
[startButton release];

}

- (void)audioRecorderDidFinishRecording:(AVAudioRecorder *) aRecorder successfully:(BOOL)flag
{

NSLog (@"audioRecorderDidFinishRecording:successfully:");
// your actions here

}