Memory warning when saving to NSData Array

Question

I'm building an application that allows the user to take several pictures in a row with the device camera.

Every time a picture is taken, it is sent to an array as an NSData variable. The problem is: when the array gets like 30 pictures, it starts to create memory warnings and eventually crashes the application.

When I leave that view I save that array to NSUserDefaults, which can also lead to memory warnings and crashing.

I need to be able to save information of like 200 taken pictures. How can I achieve this without memory warnings?

Btw: I'm using the Apple's SquareCam sample code to take pictures with the camera.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

If you don't scale/save as jpg, a photo could be quite big. A solution would be to save it on "disk" in sandbox immediately (with jpeg format would be a good idea anyway) and store in your array only the path of the file you saved.

See a sample code:

    NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
    NSString *documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];
    NSString* imgName = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@.jpg", self.uid];
    NSString *imagePath = [documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:imgName];
    NSData *webData = UIImageJPEGRepresentation(self.theImage, 0.5);
    [webData writeToFile:imagePath atomically:YES];
    self.imageURL = imagePath;