Question

I am using a ListView to display some images and captions associated with those images. I am getting the images from the Internet. Is there a way to lazy load the images so while the text displays, the UI is not locked up and images are displayed as they are downloaded? The number of images is not fixed.

Update:

(Using the below code, I have tried to download images and displaying in ListView)

Bitmap bmImg; Bitmap downloadFile(String fileUrl) 
{ 
 URL myFileUrl = null; 
  try { 
      myFileUrl = new URL(fileUrl); 
   } 
   catch (MalformedURLException e) 
   { 
      e.printStackTrace(); 
   } 

   try { 
     HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) myFileUrl .openConnection(); 
    conn.setDoInput(true); 
    conn.connect(); 
    InputStream is = conn.getInputStream(); 
    bmImg = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(is); 
   } catch (IOException e) 
    { 
        e.printStackTrace(); 
   } 
    return bmImg; 
  } 

Answer 1

import java.io.IOException;

public class DrawableManager {
    private final Map<String, Drawable> drawableMap;

    public DrawableManager() {
        drawableMap = new HashMap<String, Drawable>();
    }

    public Drawable fetchDrawable(String urlString) {
        if (drawableMap.containsKey(urlString)) {
            return drawableMap.get(urlString);
        }

        Log.d(this.getClass().getSimpleName(), "image url:" + urlString);
        try {
            InputStream is = fetch(urlString);
            Drawable drawable = Drawable.createFromStream(is, "src");


            if (drawable != null) {
                drawableMap.put(urlString, drawable);
                Log.d(this.getClass().getSimpleName(), "got a thumbnail drawable: " + drawable.getBounds() + ", "
                        + drawable.getIntrinsicHeight() + "," + drawable.getIntrinsicWidth() + ", "
                        + drawable.getMinimumHeight() + "," + drawable.getMinimumWidth());
            } else {
              Log.w(this.getClass().getSimpleName(), "could not get thumbnail");
            }

            return drawable;
        } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
            Log.e(this.getClass().getSimpleName(), "fetchDrawable failed", e);
            return null;
        } catch (IOException e) {
            Log.e(this.getClass().getSimpleName(), "fetchDrawable failed", e);
            return null;
        }
    }

    public void fetchDrawableOnThread(final String urlString, final ImageView imageView) {
        if (drawableMap.containsKey(urlString)) {
            imageView.setImageDrawable(drawableMap.get(urlString));
        }

        final Handler handler = new Handler() {
            @Override
            public void handleMessage(Message message) {
                imageView.setImageDrawable((Drawable) message.obj);
            }
        };

        Thread thread = new Thread() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                //TODO : set imageView to a "pending" image
                Drawable drawable = fetchDrawable(urlString);
                Message message = handler.obtainMessage(1, drawable);
                handler.sendMessage(message);
            }
        };
        thread.start();
    }

    private InputStream fetch(String urlString) throws MalformedURLException, IOException {
        DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        HttpGet request = new HttpGet(urlString);
        HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(request);
        return response.getEntity().getContent();
    }

}