Most mobile app has user taken images functionality and store those images in cloud storage. So in this article, I will cover how to get multiple images from the gallery and I'll make part 2 for uploading those to AWS S3.

Get multi select images from the gallery

I used react-native-image-crop-picker for multiple selections of images from the gallery of both iOS and Android devices.

Install react-native-image-crop-picker

Please go through their library to install and configure this package here.

Define state and basic UI

I created a button and on its press, I am opening the phone's gallery to select images.

  <TouchableOpacity onPress={() => openImageLibrary()}>
     <Text>Select Photos</Text>
  </TouchableOpacity>

now to store these images I created a state using React hooks

  const [images, setImages] = useState([]);

Request camera permissions

Before opening the gallery of the phone, we have to take user permission to access the gallery and photos. So for that, I used PermissionsAndroid method.

 const requestExternalWritePermission = async () => {
    if (Platform.OS === 'android') {
      try {
        const granted = await PermissionsAndroid.request(
          PermissionsAndroid.PERMISSIONS.CAMERA,
          {
            title: 'Access to photos',
            message: 'Our App would like to access your photos on your device',
            buttonNegative: 'Deny',
            buttonPositive: 'Allow',
          },
        );
        if (granted === PermissionsAndroid.RESULTS.GRANTED) {
          return granted;
        } else {
          console.log('Camera permission denied');
        }
      } catch (err) {
        console.warn(err);
      }
    } else {
      return true;
    }
  };

This function is checking if the platform or device is android then it would show the dialog box with a message and buttons below to accept or reject the permissions.

Before that, I also defined user permission in AndroidManifest.xml file like this

  <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
  <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
  <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.CAMERA" />

Note: I didn't need to add permissions for the iOS side at this point because during the installation process of react-native-image-crop-picker it will ask you to add camera and gallery permissions in info.plist file.

Open image library

Now I defined my method to select photos from the gallery and storing in my images state.

const openImageLibrary = async () => {
    let isStoragePermitted = await requestExternalWritePermission();
    if (isStoragePermitted) {
      openPicker({
        multiple: true,
        mediaType: 'photo',
        maxFiles: `4`,
        showsSelectedCount: true,
      }).then(imgs => {
        if (imgs.length <= 4) {
          setImages([...images, ...imgs]);
        } else {
          setImages([...images]);
          ToastAndroid.show("Maximum of 4 images allowed", ToastAndroid.SHORT);
        }
      });
    }
  };

In this function, I am calling requestExternalWritePermission method which I described above, if the user clicks granted then it will open the default gallery view of the user device and will allow the user to select multiple photos. I defined maxFiles as 4, you can define your limit as you want.

Note: maxFiles and showsSelectedCount prop only works for iOS devices so you would have to define custom logic for android devices.

So I am showing ToastAndroid saying Maximum of 4 images allowed if the user selects more than 4 images from the android device.

Display images in your App

Now I display the images on screen like this

  {images.length > 0 &&
    images.map(image => (
    <View key={image.path}>
      <Image 
       style={{
         width: 80,
         height: 80,
        }}
       source={{uri: image.path}}
      />
    </View>
  ))}

Please go to part 2 to upload these images to AWS