Question

I’m dealing with a problem here. There’s this view that I use to see thumbnails of a document in my app. Since loading the thumbnails slowed the main thread, I looked for workarounds and ended up on doing an NSOperation for the thumbnail creation task.

I’m displaying a view with empty thumbnail frames and the corresponding activity indicator to tell the user “hold on, they’re on their way”. But this it’s taking so long that I’m thinking of putting some elevator music to make the wait more pleasant x_X.

I have this NSOperationQueue set with 10 max concurrent operations. Setting that helped a little with the loading part, but just a little tiny little. Loading a single thumb it still taking like 6 seconds and that’s and the weird thing it’s that loading 10 takes the same.
The following code is the operation itself

@class ThumbnailView;

@protocol LoadThumbnailOperationDelegate;
@interface LoadThumbnailOperation : NSOperation {
    NSString *key;
    id<LoadThumbnailOperationDelegate> delegate;
    @private
    CGSize _size;
    CGPDFDocumentRef _docRef;
    UIImage * _image;
    NSInteger _page;


}
@property (nonatomic,retain) NSString * key;
@property (nonatomic,assign) id<LoadThumbnailOperationDelegate>delegate;
-(id)initWithPage:(NSInteger)page  operationKey:(NSString *)opKey fromDocRef:(CGPDFDocumentRef)docRef size:(CGSize)size delegate:(id<LoadThumbnailOperationDelegate>)aDelegate;
-(NSInteger)getPage ;
@protocol LoadThumbnailOperationDelegate <NSObject>

-(void)operation:(LoadThumbnailOperation*)operation finishedLoadingThumbnail:(UIImage*)image;
@end


@interface LoadThumbnailOperation (private)
-(UIImage*)makeThumbnailForPage:(NSInteger)page;

@end

@implementation LoadThumbnailOperation
@synthesize key;
@synthesize delegate;

-(id)initWithPage:(NSInteger)page  operationKey:(NSString *)opKey fromDocRef:(CGPDFDocumentRef)docRef size:(CGSize)size delegate:(id<LoadThumbnailOperationDelegate>)aDelegate{

    self = [super init];
    if (self) {

        self.key = opKey;
        _docRef = docRef;
        CGPDFDocumentRetain(_docRef);
        _size = size;
        _page = page;
        self.delegate = delegate;

    }
    return self;
}

-(void)main {
#if DEBUG
    NSLog( @"LoadThumbnailOperaiton.m -> main key:%@",key);
#endif
    NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc]init];
    if (![self isCancelled]) {
        _image = [self makeThumbnailForPage:_page];
        [_image retain];
    }
    if(![self isCancelled]){
        if ([delegate respondsToSelector:@selector(operation:finishedLoadingThumbnail:)]) {
            [delegate operation:self finishedLoadingThumbnail:_image];
        }
    }

    [pool release];
}


-(void)dealloc {


    [key release];
    CGPDFDocumentRelease(_docRef);
    [_image release];
    [super dealloc];

}
#pragma mark - 
#pragma mark graphics 


-(UIImage*) makeThumbnailForPage :(NSInteger) page  {
#if DEBUG
    NSLog( @"LoadThumbnailOperaiton.m -> makeThumbnailForPage:%d",page);
#endif
    CGPDFPageRef pdfPage = CGPDFDocumentGetPage(_docRef, page);
    if (pdfPage !=NULL){
        CGPDFPageRetain(pdfPage);

    }else {
        NSAssert (pdfPage==NULL,@"pdf page NULL");
    }

    CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
    CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(NULL, 
                                                 _size.width, 
                                                 _size.height, 
                                                 8,                      /* bits per component*/
                                                 _size.width * 4,   /* bytes per row */
                                                 colorSpace, 
                                                 kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast | kCGBitmapByteOrder32Big);
    CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);
    CGContextClipToRect(context, CGRectMake(0, 0, _size.width,_size.height));


    CGRect pdfPageRect = CGPDFPageGetBoxRect(pdfPage, kCGPDFMediaBox);
    CGRect contextRect = CGContextGetClipBoundingBox(context);
    CGAffineTransform transform =aspectFit(pdfPageRect, contextRect);

    CGContextConcatCTM(context, transform);
    CGContextDrawPDFPage(context, pdfPage);

    /* 
     create bitmap context
     */
    CGImageRef image = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(context);
    CGContextRelease(context);
    UIImage *uiImage = [[UIImage alloc]initWithCGImage:image];

    // clean up
    [uiImage autorelease];
    CGImageRelease(image);
    CGPDFPageRelease(pdfPage);
    return uiImage;
}

-(NSInteger)getPage {

    return _page;
}
@end

This is the delegate method on the view controller that adds the images that have been loaded

NOTE: this app is for iPad only

Thank you in advance for your help

Answer 1

Well,
I found a workaround to this issue. I solved it by checking whether the delegate call was done on the main thread or not. Apparently, the operations were done pretty fast, but the delegate call was not because it was not done on the main thread. So make sure you are making your delegate call on that thread by using the -[NSObject performSelectorOnMainThread:] method.

This still might not be fast for some customers. I ended up generating pdf thumbnails with automator and adding them to the app bundle and loading them from disk instead. Is much more faster than generating them on the ipad.