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Android: Retrieve images from Server

I am building an android application which requires displaying images as a flip-view which will be retrieved from server. I have considered two approaches
Retrieving images from server URL and then displaying OR
Storing the image in db at server(MySQL) and then retrieving it from sq-lite on android application
My question is, which approach will be better considering everything (performance, etc.)?
Any other better approach is also welcome :)

This depends upon your Application and products you are going to display using Images, If they are not updated frequently then it would be better to use caching for faster user experience but if data is regulatory updated and previous data is keep getting filtered then always load using network.
Another approach you can just store latest 10-20 entries in your Database and as soon as you opens the application he can see some data and new data gets downloaded, this approach keeps users engage don't leave them your app just because every time they see loading.
For Image caching purposes there various good libraries avaible which are stable solutions for multiple images downloading as well as caching purposes E.g.
UniversalImageLoader, picasso, Volley

A good approach could be store locally images locally on demand, and keep it on cache, if the image changes on future you can invalidate your cache and download a new image.
I have used in a project a library that helps me a lot with to download the image in background, allows you also load image from cache automatically if stored previously or invalidate the cache. The library is android-query and here is an example of how you could use it.

You store images locally and load then to your app from local storage (This happens in a background thread)
You update the local storage by fetching the images in background, when needed, and then trigger the load from local storage (This also happens in a background thread)
This way you won get ANR's (application not responding) because of slow or missing internet connection, and you will be able to show images without connection at all.

What is the best way to save images in Parse?

What am I trying to achieve: Based on some filters by the app user, I want to return a list with text and images.
How am I doing it: I have created a table in Parse and have added a column with object type as 'file'. I have put all the jpg/gif images into that column. (double-click, browse, select image from local computer).
The trouble I am having is, the list takes considerable time (~7 seconds) before it is displayed on my android app.
Is there a better way of handling image data within Parse or should I store images somewhere else (like Amazon S3)?
I am using standard queries for Parse in order to get data, nevertheless, am also checking if there is any code latency. Wanted to confirm if I am correctly handling the image data for back-end or not.

Is there a better way of handling image data within Parse or should I
store images somewhere else (like Amazon S3)?
If your images is not too much or you are using for example(five image) its better to save the into the Assets or Drawable Folder for loading.
and if i correctly knows about this problem, you need to use ProgressBar and one image, before loading the Images in Internet.
Caching images and displaying
Hope this helps.

I am using Parse to store images too, but it's not slow as you said. Since Parse is part of Facebook, I think their infrastructure is the same. There are possible issues:
Internet connection: Slow or on 3G?
Images: files are big?
Let me know which case you are in.
If you just display thumbnail images, I suggest you to process it before saving to Parse by writing Cloud function as describe on their blog. The you just need to use generated thumbnails on your listview/gridview

Android Storing RSS feed parsed data in a database for offline use

I am parsing a Rss feed using sax parser in android. I am able to display the data online when net is connected but i also want it to work for offline use and update it when it gets connected again to internet / wifi. I have no clue how to go about it.
What should be my best approach now ? should i construct Sql database ? considering i have images as well.
Or there is any other simpler way. I would prefer simpler way.
I need some further suggestion on the Sql database approach here, First : My rss feeds gives image url links which i diplay using bitmap and insutstream at runtime but now for offline purpose i need to save complete images like whatsapp does right ? is this right ? if yes how to save complete images in database ? And last i want to save the complete database on sd card not in internal memory , storing data on sd card will work fine or it will create problem ? because whatsapp stores quite a data in internal memory !! if storing on sd card is not a problem how do i store complete data on sd card ?

This depends on how long you want the data to persist. Ask yourself:
Should this data be available to the users after rebooting the phone, or after force closing the app? Should it be available regardless of the last time I had connectivity, as up to date as possible given that?
In that case, then yes - you should use a database. Android has a number of built in helper classes for sqlite databases.
http://developer.android.com/training/basics/data-storage/databases.html
Which should get you started.
The images are pretty straight forward as you'll just stash a reference to the image(s) in the db. You would of course write these images to disk as well (on the sd card or some other place...) See:
Save bitmap to location
Your other options, afaik are:
1) SharedPreferences (not really suited to this).
2) Serializing your data and writing out/reading in from some file.
If you're still looking for more information on Database concepts and Android, here is a very good tutorial on the topic:
http://www.vogella.com/articles/AndroidSQLite/article.html

You can use droidQuery to download the RSS Feed and cache it. Working off of this gist, which expects you to use the android-rss library, you can add the following cache flags to your AjaxOptions object:
.cache(true).cacheTimeout(AjaxCache.TIMEOUT_NEVER)
This will make it so the response is cached until you explicitly call:
AjaxCache.sharedCache().clearCache();
Which you can do after the network is connected (for help on this, check out NetWatcher).
Note that using this cacheing mechanism allows a very simple solution that will only store as long as the app process is live. If you want to save across sessions - so that if the user opens the app later and is not online, you will want to use something more complex and long-lasting, such as SharedPreferences or SQLite. A good list of options can be found here.

Android best way to retrieve images and view them from external source

I'm going to be making a wallpaper app but need some guidance on how I am going to be able to store, retrieve and view the wallpapers.
Will I need to make use of ImageView so I will be able to display the images?
I'm going to need some sort of database/website to store all of the wallpapers on. What would be the best thing to do, use a database or a website?
How would I go about retrieving the wallpapers from my chosen source?
Any help/advice would be appreciated, thanks.

A common practice is to use an rss feed of images. Then, just hook up your app to the rss feed and have it check for updates periodically.
Here is a reference on reading xml (rss) in Android:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/x-android/index.html
Good luck.

you can try aquery android library for lazy loading image. this library store images in cache memory so you not need to store it externally also it will take some time for first time loading image from web but once it load in your application then it will automatically store in cache so second time take very less time to display also its less time consuming then other lazzy loading methods..below code may help you.....
AQuery aq = new AQuery(mContext);
aq.id(R.id.image1).image("http://data.whicdn.com/images/63995806/original.jpg");
You can download library from from this link

Personally I would use a database. But the easiest option would be to use the 'res/drawable' folder in android I guess.
If you stored them on the internet and haven't got connectivity, you can't get your images, so users won't necessarily like this.
To get at them from a database you'll likely have to know some SQL or know someone who knows a bit of SQL. The advantage of storing them in a database would be that it's one neat package and it is portable.
Don't worry about using ImageView it, you just need to get the image from the source (database /filesystem etc..) and give it to the imageView

Image URL in App or in Database

I am making an android app which is going to need a lot of pictures. But I can't have them all in the app since it would be like 10 gigabytes or something. I have read some other questions where they say its smarter to store the url to the pictures in a database. My question is, should the image url be stored in the application itself or in the database?

The DB is a part of the application itself. Is it not? If you are talking about hard-coding , keeping them in DB is better keeping extensibility in mind but would involve extra call to DB.
Hard-coding them would be better performing (How much, you need to test that).
Alternatively you can make use of build tools by storing the urls in a configuration and replacing them at the time of build. While this solves above two problems, It adds complexity to the code.
So everything has its gives and takes, you need to decide what to chose on your requirements and priorities.

If you store the URLs in a database, you are able to manage your images easier, as you don't have to hardcode everything.

store URL in a DB will more preferable. And you can load the images using picasso library would better easier and comfortable way.

Its always better to store image url's in a database, whether that database resides on your phone, or on the server and you fetch it from there using rest services is upto you.
You can use multiple libraries for image lazy loading in your app.
[1]: https://github.com/nostra13/Android-Universal-Image-Loader "Universal Image Loader" is by far a very good third party library.
You can also add your own lazy loading algorithms by creating a basic Thread Pool.