Memory problems with displaying large images in UITableView - ios

Question

I have a system which loads alot of large images from the web and displays them in custom table cells. On older devices the memory warnings happen pretty quickly so I implemented a system of deleting some from the table to try to combat this but it didn't work well enough (lots of images were deleted affecting the UI).
So I thought I could load all the images into the device's cache and then load them from there - I've implemented SDWebImage. This is great but I still havent solved the problem of memory allocation as the images are still being displayed all the time and therefore kept in memory - causing crashes.
I think I need to implement a system which shows the images (from the cache) if the cell is being displayed and hide it if the cell is not showing - I'm just stuck at how to build such a system.
Or is this not going to work? Can you really keep the apps memory low (and stop it having memory warnings / crashing) by removing images from its table cells? Or do I just need to carry on with my earlier solution and just delete images/cells until the memory warnings stop?
Updated with code
TableViewController.m
- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
if (indexPath.section == 0)
{
currentIndexPath = indexPath;
ImageTableCell *cell = (ImageTableCell *)[tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
ImageDownloader *download = [totalDownloads objectAtIndex:[indexPath row]];
if (cell == nil)
{
cell = [[[ImageTableCell alloc] initWithStyle: UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier: CellIdentifier] autorelease];
}
cell.imageView.image = download.image;
return cell;
}
return nil;
}
- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section
{
int t = [totalDownloads count];
return t;
}
ImageTableCell.m - Custom cell
- (id)initWithStyle:(UITableViewCellStyle)style reuseIdentifier:(NSString *)reuseIdentifier
{
self = [super initWithStyle:style reuseIdentifier:reuseIdentifier];
if (self)
{
self.frame = CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, 320.0f, 0.0f);
self.contentView.frame = CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, 320.0f, 0.0f);
self.autoresizingMask = (UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth);
self.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleToFill;
self.autoresizesSubviews = YES;
self.contentView.autoresizingMask = (UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth);
self.contentView.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleToFill;
self.contentView.autoresizesSubviews = YES;
[self.imageView drawRect:CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, 320.0f, 0.0f)];
self.imageView.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFill;
self.imageView.autoresizingMask = (UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth);
self.imageView.opaque = YES;
}
return self;
}
ImageDownloader (implements SDWebImageManagerDelegate)
-(void) downloadImage // Comes from Model class
{
if (image == nil)
{
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:self.urlString];
SDWebImageManager *manager = [SDWebImageManager sharedManager];
// Remove in progress downloader from queue
[manager cancelForDelegate:self];
if (url)
{
[manager downloadWithURL:url delegate:self retryFailed:YES];
}
}
}
- (void)cancelCurrentImageLoad
{
[[SDWebImageManager sharedManager] cancelForDelegate:self];
}
- (void)webImageManager:(SDWebImageManager *)imageManager didFinishWithImage:(UIImage *)_image
{
self.image = _image;
if ([self.delegate respondsToSelector:#selector(addImageToModel:)]) [self.delegate addImageToModel:self];
}
- (void)webImageManager:(SDWebImageManager *)imageManager didFailWithError:(NSError *)error;
{
if ([self.delegate respondsToSelector:#selector(badImage)]) [self.delegate badImage];
}

Answer 1

After you download the images, dont keep the large images in memory. just create a small size of image(thumbnail) to display in the tableview and write the larger image to some directory.
you can create a thumbnail of your image using the following code.
CGSize size = CGSizeMake(32, 32);
UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(size);
[yourImage drawInRect:CGRectMake(0, 0, 32, 32)];
yourImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();

Answer 2

Instead of using [UIImage imageNamed:#""] , try [[[UIImage alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:#""] autorelease];
Edit:
Fine. I have gone through the SDWebImage.
Use NSAutoreleasePool wherever you find that a new thread has been spawned.
And one more solution would be, resize the image before saving to cache.

Answer 3

So basically once the image is downloaded it stays in it's SDWebImage instance and never gets released. You should save your image to iPhone's disk with:
NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString *documentsPath = [paths objectAtIndex:0];
NSString *imagePath = [documentsPath stringByAppendingPathComponent:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"image%d.jpg", rowNumber]; // you should have this set somewhere
[UIImageJPEGRepresentation(_image, 1.0) writeToFile:imagePath atomically:YES];
and keep just the path to it in your SDWebImage instance. Then in -cellForRowAtIndexPath: method instead of doing:
cell.imageView.image = download.image;
you should do something like:
UIImage *image = [[UIImage alloc] initwithContentsOfFile:download.imagePath];
cell.imageView.image = image;
[image release];
This will always load the image from the disk and since cell.imageView.image is a retained property, once it get's niled or reused, it will clean up the image from memory.

Answer 4

I would like to know how you are loading the images, are you using custom cells? If so please go through the Apple's UITableView Programming guide They are clearly saying us how to load the images. In that they are saying we should need to draw the images top avoid the memory issues.
Best example on how to load images are given in Apple's Sample Code LazyTableImages Please go through this too.

Answer 5

I have used kingfisher SDK and resized the server image to my custom cell size. It helps me a lot.
extension NewsCollectionViewCell {
func configure(with news: Articles) {
KF.url(URL(string:news?.urlToImage ?? ""), cacheKey: "\(news?.urlToImage ?? "")-").downsampling(size: imgNews.frame.size).cacheOriginalImage().set(to: imgNews)
}
}