How to convert NSString to UIImage for appengine blobstore - ios

Question

when I do the following the resulting image is null
NSLog(#"string (%#) to base64NSData",object);
NSData *base64Data = [[object dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding] base64EncodedDataWithOptions:0];
NSLog(#"NSData (%#) to UIImage",base64Data);
UIImage *image = [UIImage imageWithData:base64Data];
NSLog(#"my image is: %#",image);
How might I do this well?
Reason
I need to save an image from iOS to the Google blobstore. I need to include some metadata with the image. When I encode the string as base64 it does not work.
This is loosely a follow up to AFHTTPRequestOperationManager post multi-part request not working

Answer 1

Here is the code for generating image from NSString..
Implement this method....
+(UIImage *)imageFromText:(NSString *)text
{
UIFont *font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:20.0];
CGSize size = [text sizeWithAttributes:
#{NSFontAttributeName:
[UIFont systemFontOfSize:20.0f]}];
if (UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions != NULL)
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(size,NO,0.0);
else
UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(size);
[text drawAtPoint:CGPointMake(0.0, 0.0) withFont:font];
// [text drawAtPoint:CGPointMake(0.0, 0.0) forWidth:CGPointMake(0, 0) withFont:font fontSize:nil lineBreakMode:NSLineBreakByWordWrapping baselineAdjustment:NSTextAlignmentCenter];
UIImage *image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
return image;
}
Call this method like...
UIImage *image;
image = [self imageFromText:#"Good Morning];
//Use this image as per your requirement
I hope it work for you..

Answer 2

Here is UIImage category I used to fix my problem
http://hasseg.org/blog/post/692/use-unicode-emoji-as-icons-in-native-ios-apps/
You can modify method to pass extra parameters like font, color, backgroundColor as follows :
+ (UIImage *) hg_imageFromString:(NSString *)string withFont:(UIFont*)font textColor:(UIColor*)color andBgColor:(UIColor*)bgColor;
{
UILabel *label = [[UILabel alloc] init];
label.text = string;
label.opaque = NO;
if(bgColor != nil)
label.backgroundColor = bgColor;
if(color != nil)
label.textColor = color;
if(font != nil)
label.font = font;
else
label.font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:17.0];
CGSize size = [string sizeWithAttributes:#{NSFontAttributeName: label.font}];
CGSize measuredSize = CGSizeMake(ceilf(size.width), ceilf(size.height));
label.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, measuredSize.width, measuredSize.height);
return [UIImage hg_imageFromView:label];
}