React Native HTML to PDF not displaying local images - ios

Question

In case you guys don't know, there was a problem previously with this library not rendering local images on Android as well, but apparently it was solved. Now, I'm facing the exact same issue on iOS, with a difference that I can use static images like assets/src/assets/images/logo.png. But when the images start with something like file:///, storage://, ph:// it simply does not get rendered.
What I'm doing is trying to generate a PDF report file, which must be generated independently the user has an internet connection or not. That is the reason why I have to use local images.
The static image is the logo of the company, and the local image which is not getting rendered is an image saved to the phone's storage through Image Picker or Camera Roll. The React Native Image component displays the image perfectly, so I don't think I'm using a wrong path.
What I have tried so far:
Removing the file:/// or storage:// or ph:// from the beginning of the path string;
In some cases, when I save an image to the phone's library with Camera Roll, it will return a path that starts with ph:// but without an extension, such as .jpg or .png. I tried to put the extension manually, and still does not make any difference;
I tried to convert the image to base64 using rn-fetch-blob (with RNFetchBlob.fs.base64.encode(path)), but still got no success.
Devices:
iPhone SE with iOS 14 (also simulator iPhone 11 with iOS 15)
MacBook Air 2017 Core i5 1.8GHz and 8gb RAM (macOS Big Sur 11.5.2)
Environment
node: 12.22.7
npm: 6.14.15
react: 16.9.0
react-native: 0.61.5
react-native-html-to-pdf: ^0.11.0 (updating it to 0.12.0 also got me the same result)
Code:
sharePDF = async () => {
try {
this.changeVisibilityOptions(false);
this.changeVisibilityLoading('Gerando PDF...');
let htmlTemplate = '';
htmlTemplate = await getPDFDespesa(this.state);
const pdfOptions = {
html: htmlTemplate,
fileName: 'RelatorioDespesas',
directory: 'Relatorios'
};
let pdfFile = await RNHTMLtoPDF.convert(pdfOptions);
this.changeVisibilityLoading(false);
const shareOptions = {
title: 'Compartilhar com:',
url: `file://${pdfFile.filePath}`,
type: 'application/pdf',
failOnCancel: false
};
const ShareResponse = await Share.open(shareOptions);
} catch (error) {
this.setState({ visibilityLoadingScreen: false });
console.log('Error =>', error);
}
}
Final thoughts:
Well, since the code is stored at a private repository, I can't show the whole thing here for ethical reasons. But I'm doing my best to give you as much details as possible.
The output the code produces an almost complete PDF, with the only point that I see broken image icons where the images were supposed to be. For Android it works perfectly now.
I think this might be an issue related to WebView, since react-native-html-to-pdf uses WebView to generate the PDF from HTML code. I reached this conclusion after another developer at my job was trying to create a screen with a preview of the PDF before it could be shared got the very same problem for both Android and iOS. The library he used was react-native-webview.

Answer 1

Update with solution
Alright guys, after a long time of research, me and a colleague got to a solution which may not be the best but does what we expected.
First of all, one thing that was discovered is that we have to divide the problem in two, because we actually had two problems.
Images from react-native-image-picker: After a long time trying to find the problem which was preventing the local images from getting rendered, I tried updating the library to version 4.7.3 (latest version at that day) and did a number of required changes to the code, as the version we were using was considerably aged. Well, it happened to work out for my surprise, even with the response uri's format not being changed;
Images from #react-native-community/cameraroll: This one was a bit more complicated. It took me some time to realize that the iOS' PHAsset was not supported in the WebView or react-native-html-to-pdf (which uses WebView in background). So, after some research, me and my colleague found a workaround that lead us to a relatively easy solution. Basically we used react-native-fs to copy the PHAsset media file to a temporary directory, which would return a uri that started with file:// and could be rendered by WebView. That's the code we used to do this:
export default function getImageNameFromUrl(imageUrl = "") {
if (imageUrl) {
const splittedImageUrl = imageUrl.split('/');
return splittedImageUrl.pop();
}
return null;
};
export default async function copyAssetsFileIOSAndReturnURI(remoteURL = '', localURI = '') {
try {
if (remoteURL && localURI) {
const imageName = getImageNameFromUrl(remoteURL);
const imgPath = await RNFS.copyAssetsFileIOS(localURI, RNFS.TemporaryDirectoryPath+imageName, 0, 0);
return imgPath;
}
return null;
} catch (err) {
console.log(err);
return null;
}
}