Displaying images is easiest using a third party library such as Picasso from Square which will download and cache remote images and abstract the complexity behind an easy to use DSL.
Before Using Picasso , do not forget to add internet permission in the manifest file .
Adding Internet Permission to our Manifest.xml
file:
<manifest>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
</manifest>
It will allow your app to use internet for downloading images.
Adding Picasso to our app/build.gradle
file:
dependencies
implementation 'com.squareup.picasso:picasso:2.5.2'
}
Note: there is a bug with the current version of Picasso that prevents large images (i.e. 10MB) from being loaded, especially with newer camera phones that have larger resolutions. If you are experiencing this issue, you may need to upgrade to the Picasso 2.6.0 snapshot. See the troubleshooting guide to confirm.
To use this snapshot version, you need to add a custom separate Maven repo first:
repositories {
maven { url "https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots" }
}
// add directly below repositories section
dependencies {
implementation 'com.squareup.picasso:picasso:2.6.0-SNAPSHOT'
}
We can then load a remote image into any ImageView
with:
String imageUri = "https://i.imgur.com/tGbaZCY.jpg";
ImageView ivBasicImage = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.ivBasicImage);
Picasso.with(context).load(imageUri).into(ivBasicImage);
If you are using the latest version of Picasso (2.71828) then remember that with(context)
methods is deprecated and is replaced with get()
method
String imageUri = "https://i.imgur.com/tGbaZCY.jpg";
ImageView ivBasicImage = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.ivBasicImage);
Picasso.get().load(imageUri).into(ivBasicImage);
We can do more sophisticated work with Picasso configuring placeholders, error handling, adjusting size of the image, and scale type with:
Picasso.with(context).load(imageUri).fit().centerCrop()
.placeholder(R.drawable.user_placeholder)
.error(R.drawable.user_placeholder_error)
.into(imageView);
Be sure to use fit()
to resize the image before loading into the ImageView. Otherwise, you will consume extra memory, experience sluggish scrolling, or encounter out of memory issues if you render a lot of pictures. In addition to placeholder
and error
, there is also other configuration options such as noFade()
and noPlaceholder()
.
Placeholder Note: Placeholders and error images are not resized and must be fairly small images. Open up your static placeholder or error images in your drawable folders and make sure that the dimensions of the images are relatively small (i.e < 500px width). If not, resize those static images first and save them back to the project.
We can resize an image with respect to the aspect ratio using resize
and specifying 0 for the other dimension as outlined here:
// Resize to the width specified maintaining aspect ratio
Picasso.with(this).load(imageUrl).
resize(someWidth, 0).into(imageView);
We can combine resizing with certain transforms to make the image appear differently. For example, we can do a center cropping with:
Picasso.with(context).load(url).resize(50, 50).
centerCrop().into(imageView);
Transform options include centerCrop()
(Crops an image inside of the bounds), centerInside()
(Centers an image inside of the bounds), fit()
(Attempt to resize the image to fit exactly into the target). See this post for more details.
If an image or set of images aren't loading, make sure to check the Android monitor log in Android Studio. There's a good chance you might see an java.lang.OutOfMemoryError "Failed to allocate a [...] byte allocation with [...] free bytes"
or a Out of memory on a 51121168-byte allocation.
. This is quite common and means that you are loading one or more large images that have not been properly resized.
First, you have to find which image(s) being loaded are likely causing this error. For any given Picasso
call, we can fix this by one or more of the following approaches:
ImageView
by setting layout_width=500dp
in the layout file and then be sure to call fit()
during your load: Picasso.with(...).load(imageUri).fit().into(...)
.resize(width, height)
during the Picasso load and explicitly set a width or height for the image such as: Picasso.with(...).load(imageUri).resize(500, 0).into(...)
. By passing 0, the correct height is automatically calculated.android:adjustViewBounds="true"
from your ImageView
if present if you are calling .fit()
rather than using .resize(width, 0)
Applying these tips to all of your Picasso image loads should resolve any out of memory issues. As a fallback, you might want to open up your AndroidManifest.xml
and then add android:largeHeap
to your manifest:
<application
android:name=".MyApplication"
...
android:largeHeap="true"
...
Note that this is not generally a good idea, but can be used temporarily to trigger less out of memory errors.
If you experience errors loading images, you can attach a listener to the Builder
object to print the stack trace.
Picasso.Builder builder = new Picasso.Builder(getApplicationContext());
builder.listener(new Picasso.Listener() {
@Override
public void onImageLoadFailed(Picasso picasso, Uri uri, Exception exception) {
exception.printStackTrace();
});
We can add a progress bar or otherwise handle callbacks for an image that is loading with:
// Show progress bar
progressBar.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
// Hide progress bar on successful load
Picasso.with(this).load(imageUrl)
.into(imageView, new com.squareup.picasso.Callback() {
@Override
public void onSuccess() {
if (progressBar != null) {
progressBar.setVisibility(View.GONE);
}
}
@Override
public void onError() {
}
});
If we wish to readjust the ImageView size after the image has been retrieved, we first define a Target
object that governs how the Bitmap is handled:
private Target target = new Target() {
@Override
public void onBitmapLoaded(Bitmap bitmap, Picasso.LoadedFrom from) {
// Bitmap is loaded, use image here
imageView.setImageBitmap(bitmap);
}
@Override
public void onBitmapFailed() {
// Fires if bitmap couldn't be loaded.
}
}
Next, we can use the Target
with a Picasso call with:
Picasso.get().load("url").into(target);
You can still use all normal Picasso options like resize
, fit
, etc.
Note: The Target
object must be stored as a member field or method and cannot be an anonymous class otherwise this won't work as expected. The reason is that Picasso accepts this parameter as a weak memory reference. Because anonymous classes are eligible for garbage collection when there are no more references, the network request to fetch the image may finish after this anonymous class has already been reclaimed. See this Stack Overflow discussion for more details.
In other words, you are not allowed to do Picasso.with(this).load("url").into(new Target() { ... })
.
We can use this custom Target approach to create a staggered image view using RecyclerView
.
We first need to replace the ImageView
with the DynamicHeightImageView.java that enables us to update the ImageView
width and height while still preserving the aspect ratio when new images are replaced with old recycled views. We can then set the ratio before the image has loaded if we already know the height:width ratio using onBindViewHolder
as shown below:
public class PhotosAdapter extends RecyclerView.Adapter<PhotoViewHolder> {
// implement other methods here
@Override
public void onBindViewHolder(PhotoViewHolder holder, int position) {
Photo photo = mPhotos.get(position);
// `holder.ivPhoto` should be of type `DynamicHeightImageView`
// Set the height ratio before loading in image into Picasso
holder.ivPhoto.setHeightRatio(((double)photo.getHeight())/photo.getWidth());
// Load the image into the view using Picasso
Picasso.get().load(photo.getUrl()).into(holder.ivPhoto);
}
}
Alternatively, we can set the ratio after the bitmap has loaded if we don't know that ratio ahead of time. To avoid using an anonymous class, we will implement the Target
interface on the ViewHolder class itself for RecyclerView. When the callback is fired, we will calculate and update the image aspect ratio:
public class ViewHolder extends RecyclerView.ViewHolder implements View.OnClickListener, Target {
DynamicHeightImageView ivImage;
// implement ViewHolder methods here
@Override
public void onBitmapLoaded(Bitmap bitmap, Picasso.LoadedFrom from) {
// Calculate the image ratio of the loaded bitmap
float ratio = (float) bitmap.getHeight() / (float) bitmap.getWidth();
// Set the ratio for the image
ivImage.setHeightRatio(ratio);
// Load the image into the view
ivImage.setImageBitmap(bitmap);
}
}
With either of these approaches the staggered grid of images should now render as expected.
You can also use this third-party library for other transformations, such as blur, crop, color, and mask.
dependencies {
implementation 'jp.wasabeef:picasso-transformations:2.1.0'
// If you want to use the GPU Filters
implementation 'jp.co.cyberagent.android.gpuimage:gpuimage-library:1.4.1'
}
To do a rounded corner transformation, you would do the following:
Picasso.get().load(R.drawable.demo)
.transform(new RoundedCornersTransformation(10, 10)).into((ImageView) findViewById(R.id.image));