If you want to prefetch rows, you can respond to UIScrollViewDelegate methods to determine when the table scrolling is done, triggering a prefetch of the rows. You can perform the prefetch using SDWebImagePrefetcher (in my original answer I was a little dismissive of this useful class, but it seems to work relatively well now):
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
// the details don't really matter here, but the idea is to fetch data,
// call `reloadData`, and then prefetch the other images
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:kUrlWithJSONData];
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
[NSURLConnection sendAsynchronousRequest:request queue:[NSOperationQueue mainQueue] completionHandler:^(NSURLResponse *response, NSData *data, NSError *connectionError) {
if (connectionError) {
NSLog(@"sendAsynchronousRequest error: %@", connectionError);
return;
}
self.objects = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:data options:0 error:nil];
[self.tableView reloadData];
[self prefetchImagesForTableView:self.tableView];
}];
}
// some of the basic `UITableViewDataDelegate` methods have been omitted because they're not really relevant
Here is the simple cellForRowAtIndexPath (not entirely relevant, but just showing that if you use SDWebImagePrefetcher, you don't have to mess around with cellForRowAtIndexPath:
- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
static NSString *cellIdentifier = @"Cell";
CustomCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:cellIdentifier];
NSAssert([cell isKindOfClass:[CustomCell class]], @"cell should be CustomCell");
[cell.customImageView setImageWithURL:[self urlForIndexPath:indexPath] placeholderImage:nil];
[cell.customLabel setText:[self textForIndexPath:indexPath]];
return cell;
}
These UIScrollViewDelegate methods prefetch more rows when scrolling finishes
- (void)scrollViewDidEndDecelerating:(UIScrollView *)scrollView
{
// if `decelerate` was true for `scrollViewDidEndDragging:willDecelerate:`
// this will be called when the deceleration is done
[self prefetchImagesForTableView:self.tableView];
}
- (void)scrollViewDidEndDragging:(UIScrollView *)scrollView willDecelerate:(BOOL)decelerate
{
// if `decelerate` is true, then we shouldn't start prefetching yet, because
// `cellForRowAtIndexPath` will be hard at work returning cells for the currently visible
// cells.
if (!decelerate)
[self prefetchImagesForTableView:self.tableView];
}
You obviously need to implement a prefetch routine. This gets the NSIndexPath values for the cells on each side of the visible cells, gets their image URLs, and then prefetches that data.
/** Prefetch a certain number of images for rows prior to and subsequent to the currently visible cells
*
* @param tableView The tableview for which we're going to prefetch images.
*/
- (void)prefetchImagesForTableView:(UITableView *)tableView
{
NSArray *indexPaths = [self.tableView indexPathsForVisibleRows];
if ([indexPaths count] == 0) return;
NSIndexPath *minimumIndexPath = indexPaths[0];
NSIndexPath *maximumIndexPath = [indexPaths lastObject];
// they should be sorted already, but if not, update min and max accordingly
for (NSIndexPath *indexPath in indexPaths)
{
if (indexPath.section < minimumIndexPath.section || (indexPath.section == minimumIndexPath.section && indexPath.row < minimumIndexPath.row)) minimumIndexPath = indexPath;
if (indexPath.section > maximumIndexPath.section || (indexPath.section == maximumIndexPath.section && indexPath.row > maximumIndexPath.row)) maximumIndexPath = indexPath;
}
// build array of imageURLs for cells to prefetch
NSMutableArray *imageURLs = [NSMutableArray array];
indexPaths = [self tableView:tableView priorIndexPathCount:kPrefetchRowCount fromIndexPath:minimumIndexPath];
for (NSIndexPath *indexPath in indexPaths)
[imageURLs addObject:[self urlForIndexPath:indexPath]];
indexPaths = [self tableView:tableView nextIndexPathCount:kPrefetchRowCount fromIndexPath:maximumIndexPath];
for (NSIndexPath *indexPath in indexPaths)
[imageURLs addObject:[self urlForIndexPath:indexPath]];
// now prefetch
if ([imageURLs count] > 0)
{
[[SDWebImagePrefetcher sharedImagePrefetcher] prefetchURLs:imageURLs];
}
}
These are the utility methods for getting the NSIndexPath for the rows immediately preceding the visible cells as well as those immediately following the visible cells:
/** Retrieve NSIndexPath for a certain number of rows preceding particular NSIndexPath in the table view.
*
* @param tableView The tableview for which we're going to retrieve indexPaths.
* @param count The number of rows to retrieve
* @param indexPath The indexPath where we're going to start (presumably the first visible indexPath)
*
* @return An array of indexPaths.
*/
- (NSArray *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView priorIndexPathCount:(NSInteger)count fromIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
NSMutableArray *indexPaths = [NSMutableArray array];
NSInteger row = indexPath.row;
NSInteger section = indexPath.section;
for (NSInteger i = 0; i < count; i++) {
if (row == 0) {
if (section == 0) {
return indexPaths;
} else {
section--;
row = [tableView numberOfRowsInSection:section] - 1;
}
} else {
row--;
}
[indexPaths addObject:[NSIndexPath indexPathForRow:row inSection:section]];
}
return indexPaths;
}
/** Retrieve NSIndexPath for a certain number of following particular NSIndexPath in the table view.
*
* @param tableView The tableview for which we're going to retrieve indexPaths.
* @param count The number of rows to retrieve
* @param indexPath The indexPath where we're going to start (presumably the last visible indexPath)
*
* @return An array of indexPaths.
*/
- (NSArray *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView nextIndexPathCount:(NSInteger)count fromIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
NSMutableArray *indexPaths = [NSMutableArray array];
NSInteger row = indexPath.row;
NSInteger section = indexPath.section;
NSInteger rowCountForSection = [tableView numberOfRowsInSection:section];
for (NSInteger i = 0; i < count; i++) {
row++;
if (row == rowCountForSection) {
row = 0;
section++;
if (section == [tableView numberOfSections]) {
return indexPaths;
}
rowCountForSection = [tableView numberOfRowsInSection:section];
}
[indexPaths addObject:[NSIndexPath indexPathForRow:row inSection:section]];
}
return indexPaths;
}
There's a lot there, but in reality, SDWebImage and its SDWebImagePrefetcher is doing the heavy lifting.
I include my original answer below for the sake of completeness.
Original answer:
If you want to do some prefetching with SDWebImage, you could do something like the following:
Add a completion block to your setImageWithURL call:
- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
NSLog(@"%s", __FUNCTION__);
static NSString *cellIdentifier = @"Cell";
UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:cellIdentifier];
TableModelRow *rowData = self.objects[indexPath.row];
cell.textLabel.text = rowData.title;
[cell.imageView setImageWithURL:rowData.url
placeholderImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"placeholder.png"]
completed:^(UIImage *image, NSError *error, SDImageCacheType cacheType) {
[self prefetchImagesForTableView:tableView];
}];
return cell;
}
I must confess I don't really like calling my prefetcher routine here (I wish iOS had some nice didFinishTableRefresh delegate method), but it works, even if it's calling the routine more times than I'd really want. I just make sure below that the routine below makes sure that it won't make redundant requests.
Anyway, I write a prefetch routine that looks for, say, the next ten images:
const NSInteger kPrefetchRowCount = 10;
- (void)prefetchImagesForTableView:(UITableView *)tableView
{
// determine the minimum and maximum visible rows
NSArray *indexPathsForVisibleRows = [tableView indexPathsForVisibleRows];
NSInteger minimumVisibleRow = [indexPathsForVisibleRows[0] row];
NSInteger maximumVisibleRow = [indexPathsForVisibleRows[0] row];
for (NSIndexPath *indexPath in indexPathsForVisibleRows)
{
if (indexPath.row < minimumVisibleRow) minimumVisibleRow = indexPath.row;
if (indexPath.row > maximumVisibleRow) maximumVisibleRow = indexPath.row;
}
// now iterate through our model;
// `self.objects` is an array of `TableModelRow` objects, one object
// for every row of the table.
[self.objects enumerateObjectsUsingBlock:^(TableModelRow *obj, NSUInteger idx, BOOL *stop) {
NSAssert([obj isKindOfClass:[TableModelRow class]], @"Expected TableModelRow object");
// if the index is within `kPrefetchRowCount` rows of our visible rows, let's
// fetch the image, if it hasn't already done so.
if ((idx < minimumVisibleRow && idx >= (minimumVisibleRow - kPrefetchRowCount)) ||
(idx > maximumVisibleRow && idx <= (maximumVisibleRow + kPrefetchRowCount)))
{
// my model object has method for initiating a download if needed
[obj downloadImageIfNeeded];
}
}];
}
In the downloading routine, you can check to see if the image download has started and, if not, then start it. To do this with SDWebImage, I keep a weak pointer to the web image operation in my TableModelRow class (the model class that backs the individual rows of my table):
@property (nonatomic, weak) id<SDWebImageOperation> webImageOperation;
I then have the downloadImageIfNeeded routine start a download if it hasn't already (you can see why making that weak was so important ... I'm checking to see if this row already has an operation pending before starting another). I'm not doing anything with the downloaded image (short of, for debugging purposes, logging the fact that a download was done), but rather just downloading and letting SDImageWeb keep track of the cached image for me, so when cellForRowAtIndexPath later requests the image as the user scrolls down, it's there, ready and waiting.
- (void)downloadImageIfNeeded
{
if (self.webImageOperation)
return;
SDWebImageManager *imageManager = [SDWebImageManager sharedManager];
self.webImageOperation = [imageManager downloadWithURL:self.url
opt
