How to upload multiple files to Firebase from Android? - android

I have a simple phototaking android app that allows the user to take a photo and save it. I allow the user to create multiple versions of the photo in the app - adding captions, filters, etc. After the user is finished, I upload the photo to Firebase storage. Here I upload a few files
The original raw bitmap that was taken using the camera
The finished bitmap with all edited captions and filters applied
The thumbnail of the the raw bitmap, and finally
The thumbnail of the finished image
The thumbnails and the full size images allow users to undertake future interactions with the app.
What would be the most efficient way to upload the images? Options that I know of are
Using 4 different upload tasks from the Android app. But this is taking a few seconds to finish all 4 uploads.
Using 2 upload tasks for the fullsize images and then using Firebase 'functions' to create the the thumbnails in the server. However, I would need to create the thumbnails locally in the app for display purposes before uploading, so it would mean creating the thumbnail in 2 places - app and the server. Also it would mean doing double error handling - one at the server side and the other on the app end.
Is there any other option?
Looking forward to whatever help I can get. As usual, feel free to ask for clarifications, via comments.

That depends on your scenario. If you are on "Spark" plan then using firebase functions too much might exceed your free quota of:
Invocation (125K/month)
GB-seconds (40K/month)
CPU-seconds (40K/month)
But if you can upgrade to "Flame" or "Blaze" then it won't be an issue and its the preferable way.
On the other hand, thumbnail file aren't too big that takes much time for uploading, unless you are on extremely slow connection, then uploading thumb files from app won't be an issue. You might not even notice the uploading time. It will be quick.

Related

How To Reduce File Size For A Custom Sticker App

I've built a custom iMessage sticker app that has hundreds of stickers and requires an in-app purchase to unlock them. As I'm adding more and more stickers, my app size is obviously increasing. I'm doing my best to compress images and keep the file size down but trying to think of other ways to keep a low file size.
I came across this sticker app:
Apple: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mojilala-unlimited-10000+/id1153431461?mt=8&_branch_match_id=598750316922589452
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.leo.stickers&hl=en
It has 42,000 stickers but the file size is only around 22MB. It works like a normal sticker app too, you can't tell a difference.
I'm very new to coding and have no idea what to even research to have something like this for my app. Could the stickers be hosted on a WordPress site and a link to the image be sent to the app somehow? Is this something Firebase could do?
I'm not sure how the above mentioned app works. But I think you can use the following approaches:
Only add the free stickers to the app, and download the others from the server when user purchases it.
Slightly different approach from the above one, add the low resolution thumbnails to the app. When user launches your app for the first time download the actual stickers in the background and show them after the successful download. Add some logic to check whether any new stickers available to download when your app is launched each time and act accordingly.
For iOS there are several methods to reduce the app size, please check this Technical Q & A
Use Firebase Cloud Storage to upload your stickers as images. You can download those images and display them in your app. Go through the Firebase Cloud Storage Documentation for the details.

Mobile Application Development using Android

I am developing an android application in which when a user logins through facebook his profile picture gets stored. Then the user is shown the profile pictures of his fb friends who have installed the app, one by one. First, one friend's pic is shown then on click of next button, next friend's pic is shown. This continues till all the friends images have been shown to the user or user has skipped the section.
First, I thought of storing all the images in my database and then retrieve them one by one as the user presses the next button. But doing so will render very slow performance as for every time an image has to be shown to the user I have to hit the db.
The alternative is to store images in my local drive and store every image's location in the db.
Please elaborate on how this could be achieved and the performance issues in this case considering a large user base?
Also suggest any other way of achieving the aim, if you may.
I am using WAMP for the purpose.
Thanks in advance.
The pictures are stored in the apps cache after they are downloaded.
When the user logs in to fb for the 1st time it will download the images.
2nd time it will get them from cache unless its a new image.
clear the cache when it gets to a certain MB limit and keep it small
I suggest using Google Volley library to get images from the net as when setup properly you can expire / clear images from the cache.
The are are other libraries for image loading and handling to consider such as Universal Image loader and Picasso but Volley can also be used for fetching Data from the Net.

NetworkImageView. Save image in thumbnail [Server] / resize in client?

I'm trying to create a CRUD android application.
Now, when the List Activity is shown, it will display the items created along with a thumbnail of the original image.
What is the best practice for displaying a thumbnail in an Android application with Volley? Should I generate a thumbnail for the images uploaded or just re-size the image at the client side?
It's hard to come up with a general answer for this questions because it all depends on how many images you're trying to download and how important showing the thumbnails is.
I would personally generate the thumbnails on the server side as soon as they are uploaded by the user. Doing this has several advantages:
All your app has to do is request the thumbnail and render it, which is much simpler and less CPU-intensive than using Volley's ImageRequest.
Smaller images means less data usage. You definitely don't want your app to download a 10MB 25-megapixel image over a 3G connection just to shrink it to a 100x100 thumbnail that the user might not even care about.
The only drawback that I can think of is that you might have to generate multiple thumbnails, one for each screen size (e.g. one for hdpi screens and another for xxhdpi). This is slightly more expensive on the server side but might make your UI look much better.
Also, remember to cache thumbnails in your app's cache directory so you don't have to re-request them every single time you want to show them.

Design of mobile app and server dealing with different size of photos

I don't know this title is clearly reflect the question content. Please help rephrase if you think it is confusing. Thanks!
This is a generic question about some common architecture. I am working on a Android app that can take and share photo just like Instagram. And I have a backend web service powered by Django.
The issue I am facing is, in the app, I will need to show different resolution of image (for example, thumbnails for profile image, mid-resolution for previews, and full resolution for expanded image views.) I want to ask a common pattern about how to make this happen.
I have two proposals on doing this task, and not sure which way I should go:
1.When user upload photos from the mobile app, I can compress it locally and send 3 different sizes (low res thumbnails, mid res, and high res). So server side can store them and return them back in different cases. The Con of this approach that I can think about is it will drain more user's data usage because now user will need to send multiple images. It may also cause uploading take more time and higher impact in user experience.
2.When user upload photos from the mobile app, they only upload the original image. The server side logic will do the compression for each income image, and store them accordingly. The Con of this approach is server may need to carry a lot more workload. In this case, if user increases a lot, it may crash the server.
I am hoping to get some pointer on this issue, or any reference about this topic will be helpful!
Upload the full size image to the server and have the server do the heavy lifting. Create three version of the image (small medium and large) and store them on the server (or content delivery network). Create a database table to keep track of the image id for each image and its various versions.
With android you wont know how powerful the phone running your app is, never assume it can handle whatever image manipulation you need, also try and keep network I/O as low as possible.
Alan - Think of smart phones as relatively dumb terminals made for purpose of consuming content. Most of the business logic and heavy processing should me implemented on server side.
In terms of architecture, you are facing scalability problem. You cannot expand cpu/memory or storage of a device to any level you want. However you can scale your servers horizontally or vertically by adding more ram/cores/disks etc. You can put cluster on server and have a farm of servers if data increases to that level.
So its always advisable to just upload the original image without locally processing. Locally processing also drains battery besides other downside you mentioned.
Again you business logic or processing technique changes, you have to redeploy all apps. Where as on server side such deployments are very well in your control.
What i would do is a first resize in the mobile, just one, because you dont one to transfer 13Mpx picture and also you dont want in your server a picture 2 screens wide (this is the first thing instagram does). After that, upload the file, and have the server doing the rest of the stuff.
this avoid a lot of that usage
ensures that will work fine in any device (every one has different capabilities, so you cant trust them for heavy work)
You can change some decisions about settings or configurations, and all this is centralized, if you change any common behavior, you don't need all the devices to get the last version of the app.
About crashing the server, there is one first measure i would take:
Don't do any operation, like re-sizing or making copies of the image in the moment of the upload, you can choose one of this approaches:
Do it when there is a request for the file. this is, dont do it when the user sends it, but when somebody needs it.
Do it in a continuos backgorund process, like a cronjob running every minute, for instance.
or a combination of the two, there is a process in the background doing the stuff for all the pending images, but if somebody enters in the website and they need an image that is not yet generated, it is generate in that moment.

Best Practice For Displaying Facebook Profile Pictures In an Android App

I want to have an android app that displays users' facebook profile pictures. I'm wondering what the bast practice is for this purpose. Should I make ImageView load pictures at runtime from facebook URI? or save the pictures to my own server and send them to the devices in bytes on demand? or cache them locally?
What is the "common" way of doing this?
Personally, I would cache them locally unless you intend to have hundreds of them.
It would make the app work offline and display the images a lot faster.
You would have to update them regularly though as a user's Facebook profile picture can change fairly often.

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