Capturing Images with Android's Built-in Intent System

=====================================================================================

Android provides an intent system to allow different components within and outside an application communicate with each other without needing explicit references or even knowing about each others' existence beforehand! The `MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE` action is one such way that can be used by any app on a device for tasks like taking photos.

In this tutorial, we will explore how you could implement image capture functionality in your Android application using the intent system. We'll cover what happens when an activity starts another through intents and see some practical examples of why developers might want to do so.

### Using Intent Flags

When starting an Activity from within another via `startActivity()`, it is sometimes necessary to pass extra information along with the Intent object being passed down the chain. This can be achieved using intent flags.

For example, let's say we have two Activities A and B where activity B needs some data that was previously computed in activity A before proceeding further with its execution flow.

### Example Use Case: Custom Camera App

Let's consider a scenario where you're developing an app called 'Weather Forecast' which allows users to contribute photos of the sky condition at their location towards creating a global weather map. To achieve this, your app needs access to the device's camera hardware for capturing images.

One approach could have been to directly interact with Android's built-in Camera class and handle all low-level operations yourself - opening / closing cameras, setting up preview surface etc., but that would make your code quite complex and tightly coupled with specific versions of android's API. Instead, you want a more maintainable solution where possible changes don't require significant refactoring across multiple modules in future releases.

Here is how we can do this using Android's intent system:

```java

Intent i = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);

startActivity(i);

```

This will start the default camera app on your device, and once a photo has been captured, it will be returned back to our activity through `onActivityResult()` method.

###

In conclusion, using Android's intent system for tasks like capturing images is not only more efficient but also provides better maintainability compared to rolling out custom implementation yourself. The above example demonstrates how easy it is to delegate such low-level operations to existing components on the device while keeping your main logic focused on what matters most - providing value added features to end users.

Hope this tutorial was helpful in understanding how you can use Android's intent system for image capture tasks!

Image capture app