At this point I'm really fed up. It's been nearly a week now trying to solve this issue so I can move ahead. I've read multiple threads and done multiple searches in regards to my slow loading choppy UICollectionView.
I've tried to do this without any libraries as well as with SDWebImage and AFNetwork. It still doesn't fix things. Images loading isn't really a problem. The problem arrives when I scroll to cells that aren't currently showing on the screen.
As of now I've deleted all the code and all traces of any libraries and would like to get help in order to implement this properly. I've made about 2 posts on this already and this would be my third attempt coming from a different angle.
Information
My backend data is stored on Parse.com
I have access to currently loaded objects by calling [self objects]
My cellForItemAtIndex is a modified version that also returns the current object of an index.
From what I understand in my cellForItemAtIndex I need to check for an image, if there isn't one I need to download one on background thread and set it so it shows in the cell, then store a copy of it in cache so that if the associated cell goes off screen when I do scroll back to it I can use the cached image rather than downloading it again.
My custom parse collectionViewController gives me all the boiler plate code I need to get access to next set of objects, current loaded objects, pagination, pull to refresh etc. I really just need to get this collection view sorted. I never needed to do any of this with my tableview of a previous app which had much more images. It's really frustrating spending a whole day trying to solve an issue and getting no where.
This is my current collectionView cellForItemAtIndex:
-(UICollectionViewCell *)collectionView:(UICollectionView *)collectionView cellForItemAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath object:(PFObject *)object
{
static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell";
VAGGarmentCell *cell = [collectionView dequeueReusableCellWithReuseIdentifier: CellIdentifier forIndexPath:indexPath];
// check for image
// if there is a cached one use that
// if not then download one on background thread
// set my cells image view with that image
// cache image for re-use.
// PFFile *userImageFile = object[@"image"];
[[cell title] setText:[object valueForKey:@"title"]]; //title set
[[cell price] setText:[NSString stringWithFormat: @"£%@", [object valueForKey:@"price"]]]; //price set
return cell;
}
I am also using a custom collectionViewCell:
@interface VAGGarmentCell : UICollectionViewCell
@property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet UIImageView *imageView;
@property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet UITextView *title;
@property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet UILabel *price;
@property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet UIActivityIndicatorView *activityIndicator;
@end
If there's any more information you'd like please ask. I'd just like a clear example in code of how to do this correctly, if it still doesn't work for me then I guess there is something wrong some where within my code.
I'm going to continue reading through various threads and resources I've come across in the last few days. I can say one benefit in this experience is that I have a better understanding of threads and lazy loading but it is still very frustrated that I have made any progress with my actual app.
Incase you wondered here is my previous post: In a UICollectionView how can I preload data outside of the cellForItemAtIndexPath to use within it?
I'd either like to do this quick and manually or using the AFNetwork as that didn't cause any errors or need hacks like SDWebImage did.
Hope you can help
Kind regards.