WP7 PhotoChooserTask – Hint Remove the Cable

One of the features of an App I’m working on allows users to select a Photo from their WP7 Phone using PhotoChooser and upload it a service on the web. The approach I’m taking is fairly simple:

• Select photo.
• Hook event indicating photo selection occurred.
• Convert photo to byte[].

Note: This is simply proof of concept. There are likely other approaches to achieve the same result.

Add a page scope PhotoChooserTask to MainPage.xaml.cs.

Initialize the object and set up the Event Handler in the Constructor:

Add a button to your silverlight page that’ll launch the PhotoPicker when clicked.

Once an image is selected the Completed Event fires, the Photo then can be accessed. In my particular case I wanted to convert the image to a byte[] array so it could be shipped off to a web service.  I can now pass bytes to my web service.

For about an hour I thought I had a bug. While debugging/deploying  I’d set my Debug Target set to Windows Phone 7 Device, then launch Zune and Debug (F5) . The App deploys very quickly to WP7 but PhotoResult.TaskResult continually returned “Cancelled” after selecting a Photo from the PhotoPicker.

No matter what I did, I was unable to get the PhotoPciker to launch. Until I tried this:

1. Deployed App to Device.
2. Unplugged the Cable between Computer and Phone.
3. Run your App.
4. Success!

The PhotoPicker Completed Event is never going to fire with the Cable plugged in. I don’t know if this is an issue with the Phone or Zune.