Optimized Image Loading in a UIScrollView
- by Michael Gaylord
I have a UIScrollView that has a set of images loaded side-by-side inside it. You can see an example of my app here: http://www.42restaurants.com. My problem comes in with memory usage. I want to lazy load the images as they are about to appear on the screen and unload images that aren't on screen. As you can see in the code I work out at a minimum which image I need to load and then assign the loading portion to an NSOperation and place it on an NSOperationQueue. Everything works great apart from a jerky scrolling experience.
I don't know if anyone has any ideas as to how I can make this even more optimized, so that the loading time of each image is minimized or so that the scrolling is less jerky.
- (void)scrollViewDidScroll:(UIScrollView *)scrollView{
[self manageThumbs];
}
- (void) manageThumbs{
int centerIndex = [self centerThumbIndex];
if(lastCenterIndex == centerIndex){
return;
}
if(centerIndex >= totalThumbs){
return;
}
NSRange unloadRange;
NSRange loadRange;
int totalChange = lastCenterIndex - centerIndex;
if(totalChange > 0){ //scrolling backwards
loadRange.length = fabsf(totalChange);
loadRange.location = centerIndex - 5;
unloadRange.length = fabsf(totalChange);
unloadRange.location = centerIndex + 6;
}else if(totalChange < 0){ //scrolling forwards
unloadRange.length = fabsf(totalChange);
unloadRange.location = centerIndex - 6;
loadRange.length = fabsf(totalChange);
loadRange.location = centerIndex + 5;
}
[self unloadImages:unloadRange];
[self loadImages:loadRange];
lastCenterIndex = centerIndex;
return;
}
- (void) unloadImages:(NSRange)range{
UIScrollView *scrollView = (UIScrollView *)[[self.view subviews] objectAtIndex:0];
for(int i = 0; i < range.length && range.location + i < [scrollView.subviews count]; i++){
UIView *subview = [scrollView.subviews objectAtIndex:(range.location + i)];
if(subview != nil && [subview isKindOfClass:[ThumbnailView class]]){
ThumbnailView *thumbView = (ThumbnailView *)subview;
if(thumbView.loaded){
UnloadImageOperation *unloadOperation = [[UnloadImageOperation alloc] initWithOperableImage:thumbView];
[queue addOperation:unloadOperation];
[unloadOperation release];
}
}
}
}
- (void) loadImages:(NSRange)range{
UIScrollView *scrollView = (UIScrollView *)[[self.view subviews] objectAtIndex:0];
for(int i = 0; i < range.length && range.location + i < [scrollView.subviews count]; i++){
UIView *subview = [scrollView.subviews objectAtIndex:(range.location + i)];
if(subview != nil && [subview isKindOfClass:[ThumbnailView class]]){
ThumbnailView *thumbView = (ThumbnailView *)subview;
if(!thumbView.loaded){
LoadImageOperation *loadOperation = [[LoadImageOperation alloc] initWithOperableImage:thumbView];
[queue addOperation:loadOperation];
[loadOperation release];
}
}
}
}
EDIT:
Thanks for the really great responses. Here is my NSOperation code and ThumbnailView code. I tried a couple of things over the weekend but I only managed to improve performance by suspending the operation queue during scrolling and resuming it when scrolling is finished.
Here are my code snippets:
//In the init method
queue = [[NSOperationQueue alloc] init];
[queue setMaxConcurrentOperationCount:4];
//In the thumbnail view the loadImage and unloadImage methods
- (void) loadImage{
if(!loaded){
NSString *filename = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%03d-cover-front", recipe.identifier, recipe.identifier];
NSString *directory = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"RestaurantContent/%03d", recipe.identifier];
NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:filename ofType:@"png" inDirectory:directory];
UIImage *image = [UIImage imageWithContentsOfFile:path];
imageView = [[ImageView alloc] initWithImage:image andFrame:CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, 176.0f, 262.0f)];
[self addSubview:imageView];
[self sendSubviewToBack:imageView];
[imageView release];
loaded = YES;
}
}
- (void) unloadImage{
if(loaded){
[imageView removeFromSuperview];
imageView = nil;
loaded = NO;
}
}
Then my load and unload operations:
- (id) initWithOperableImage:(id<OperableImage>) anOperableImage{
self = [super init];
if (self != nil) {
self.image = anOperableImage;
}
return self;
}
//This is the main method in the load image operation
- (void)main {
[image loadImage];
}
//This is the main method in the unload image operation
- (void)main {
[image unloadImage];
}
