Get URL of a newly created asset, iOS 9 style

Desmond Hume picture Desmond Hume · Jan 13, 2016 · Viewed 9.3k times · Source

ALAssetsLibrary is deprecated these days but practically all examples on SO are still making use of it. For my objective, I need to know the URL of the video that was added to the Photo Library so I could share a video to the Instagram app (that's the only way in which Instagram accepts videos). The URL should probably start with "assets-library://..."

This is simple with ALAssetsLibrary:

ALAssetsLibrary *library = [[ALAssetsLibrary alloc] init];
[library writeVideoAtPathToSavedPhotosAlbum:videoFilePath completionBlock:^(NSURL *assetURL, NSError *error) {  // ...

Above, the URL is passed as an argument to the completion block. But what about iOS 9 compatible way with PHPhotoLibrary class and performChanges method?

var videoAssetPlaceholder:PHObjectPlaceholder!  // property

// ...

let videoURL = NSBundle.mainBundle().URLForResource("Video_.mp4", withExtension: nil)!

let photoLibrary = PHPhotoLibrary.sharedPhotoLibrary()
photoLibrary.performChanges({
    let request = PHAssetChangeRequest.creationRequestForAssetFromVideoAtFileURL(videoURL)
    self.videoAssetPlaceholder = request?.placeholderForCreatedAsset
},
completionHandler: { success, error in
    if success
    {
        // The URL of the video asset?
    }
})

Answer

Desmond Hume picture Desmond Hume · Jan 14, 2016

Here's what I've ended up with:

let videoURL = NSBundle.mainBundle().URLForResource("Video_.mp4", withExtension: nil)!

let photoLibrary = PHPhotoLibrary.sharedPhotoLibrary()
var videoAssetPlaceholder:PHObjectPlaceholder!
photoLibrary.performChanges({
    let request = PHAssetChangeRequest.creationRequestForAssetFromVideoAtFileURL(videoURL)
    videoAssetPlaceholder = request!.placeholderForCreatedAsset
},
completionHandler: { success, error in
    if success {
        let localID = videoAssetPlaceholder.localIdentifier
        let assetID =
            localID.stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString(
                "/.*", withString: "",
                options: NSStringCompareOptions.RegularExpressionSearch, range: nil)
        let ext = "mp4"
        let assetURLStr =
            "assets-library://asset/asset.\(ext)?id=\(assetID)&ext=\(ext)"

        // Do something with assetURLStr
    }
})