#WebCachedImageView

An ImageView capable of downloading images from the web and caching them for faster and offline access.

##Purpose Mobile devices have limited processor power, battery and data connectivity. Hence, it's never a good idea to download images over and over again when they need to be displayed.

A simple but common reproduction of this problem is when you have a ListView with images. Since Android's Adapter recycles the list's views when the user scrolls, the images have to be downloaded and re-downloaded for each scroll action.

WebCachedImageView solves this problem by downloading the image and caching it on memory and on disk. So subsequent displays of the same image don't need to download data nor require a lot of processor power.

##How it works WebCachedImageView downloads the image on a background thread, without blocking the UI. After the image is downloaded for the first time, it is cached on memory and on disk, according to the current configuration.

When the image needs to be loaded again, WebCachedImageView will first look for it on memory, because it's faster. If the image was garbage collected, it will look for it on disk.

##Pro features

###Caching The WebCachedImageView's cache is a LRU cache, which means that the images that were least recently used will be the first ones to be purged.

###Concurrency WebCachedImageView handles concurrency, so you can use it inside AdapterViews (like ListView) and recycle it without worrying about mismatched threads.

###Image sampling according to the view size WebCachedImageView will download and cache only the amount of pixels that actually need to be displayed. It means that if you have a WebCachedImageView of 100dp x 100dp on a hdpi screen, and have to download a 500px x 500px image, the library will sample the image, resize it and only download a subset of 150px x 150px.

##Usage You can find a whole working example on the DumbledroidExample folder of the Dumbledroid repository. It's a working Android project that uses WebCachedImageView to download the images. You can see the correct usage at flickr_result_row.xml and FlickrAdapter.java.

But for the purposes of this manual, following are step by step instructions.

###Step 1: Add the library to your Android project Import the WebCachedImageView project on Eclipse and reference it as a library project of your main project.

###Step 2: Add the permissions to your AndroidManifest.xml WebCachedImageView requires the following permissions to work:

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

The WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE is only required if you enable the disk cache.

###Step 3: Add the view to your XML layout You need to add the WebCachedImageView tag to your XML layout file:

<WebCachedImageView
    android:id="@+id/wciv"
    android:layout_width="90dp"
    android:layout_height="90dp" />

###Step 4 (optional): Fine-tuning If you want to, you can fine-tune WebCachedImageView's settings. To do that, first you'll have to add the following attribute to your root XML node:

xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/res-auto"

####Memory allocation By default, WebCachedImageView allocates 1/8 (12.5%) of the phone's memory to the memory cache. To change that, set a float value to the app:memoryPercentToUse attribute.

####Caching mode WebCachedImageView can cache in two levels: memory and disk. By default' it uses both. But you can set the app:mode value to no_cache, memory or disk.

When it's all set, your XML will look something like this:

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/res-auto"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent" >

    <WebCachedImageView
        android:id="@+id/wciv"
        android:layout_width="90dp"
        android:layout_height="90dp"
        app:memoryPercentToUse="20.0"
        app:mode="memory" />
        
</RelativeLayout>

###Step 5: Download the image Just call the following code whenever you need to download an image:

WebCachedImageView wciv = (WebCachedImageView) findViewById(R.id.wciv);
wciv.setImageUrl(YOUR_IMAGE_URL);

You don't have to spawn a new thread or create an AsyncTask to do that. WebCachedImageView does that for you.

##License WebCachedImageView source code is released under BSD 2-clause license. Check LICENSE file for more information.

If you use this code, I'd appreciate you refer my name (Leocadio Tiné) and the link to this project's page in your project's website or credits screen. Though you don't have any legal/contractual obligation to do so, just good karma.

##Suggestions? Comments? Pull requests are always welcome. So are donations :)

To find me, buzz at me[at]leocad.io or follow me on Twitter. To read interesting stuff, go to my blog.