hello, midas!

hey mark

how can I help you today?

Im having a hell of a time getting an image to fit properly into a recyclerview grid cell

I want the width to match the cell width

and the height can vary

I have tried so many scale types and etc

just cant get it to work

any suggestions?

is the cell width a known fixed value, or is the cell width dynamic (e.g., available space divided into four columns)?

width is dynamic

OK, and how are you defining the size of the ImageView itself?

hold on let me bring that up

match_parent

fr the width

(hello, Ankur -- I will be with you shortly!)

and wrap_content for height

midasL hmmm...

Heya folks. No worries, I can wait.

er, midas: hmmmm...

is the ImageView the cell itself, or is it contained in something else?

its a vertical Linear Layout consisting of the ImageView and a TextView

the LinearLayout is also width = match_parent and height = wrap_content

I have this sneaking suspicion that the height of wrap_content will be a problem

interesting. so I should try match parent?

or give it 0dp and a weight?

I'd try the latter first

the problem there is that the LinearLayout itself is deriving its size from its contents

Aha. And the image isnt loading fast enough to get an accurate height?

possibly

what you might want to do is temporarily fix the size of the ImageLayout to specific dimensions

use that to figure out the right scaleType for your needs

then, once the scaleType is established, work on making the size more flexible, in accordance with the cell width

yeah ok, that makes sense. Ill try it now and get back if that doesnt do the job. thanks.

OK, I'll switch to Ankur for a while, and I'll check in with you in a bit

Ankur: your turn! do you have a question?

thanks

Yes. Hoping you can help me spot a flaw in my thinking before I spend a bunch of time building something.

We're building an offline-first app, intended for deployment in places with poor connectivity. Fairly simple CRUD, but I'd like to have everything happen locally in SQLite, with periodic syncs to the server (that we also control and can build in whatever way is most convenient)

only if you tell me what you're thinking :-)

I'd expected to find some well-understood framework for making local changes and syncing to remote servers (similar to git / couchbase / etc), but there appears to be nothing much in that space for Android that I can find. I'm happy to go build it, but I imagine there's a reason why that doesn't exist that I might be missing.

partly, that's because there are few standards on the server side

Have you heard of any projects in this space? Or alternatively, are there things you'd be wary of before building your own?

well, the only things that can really do what you're asking have to be opinionated on both sides, client and server

so, for example, you cited Couchbase

they offer syncing, but it requires Couchbase on both sides

Right, since it'll need to hook into data-change events on both sides.

a lot of Android apps don't have that degree of flexibility on the server side, because the same server is handling other cases (e.g., Web apps)

Fair enough

And it's not clear that there's a simple way to handle merge conflicts across problem spaces...

right

that's why offline-first isn't super-common, unless the users are fairly independent of each other

I guess I'm just concerned about building sync naively. Sync can go very wrong in subtle ways, and I'd prefer to use an existing battle-tested implementation, but can't find one.

I'm not aware of any that are publicly available

outside of Couchbase Mobile (and git, though I'm not sure if there's a decent native Android git library...)

however, I don't have the world's Android frameworks memorized anymore

(I ran out of fingers a few years ago)

So if you were trying to solve for the same need, you'd build it yourself? Or is there something that you think is close enough that would be a good starting point to explore?

so, it's entirely possible something is kicking around that I just haven't run across yet

I just saw this but haven't played with it yet: https://github.com/NYTimes/Store

off the cuff, that seems one-way, server to client

Yeah, it doesn't appear to have a solution for writes.

that's one of the sorts of puzzle pieces that I mentioned

though I haven't seen that particular library before, which is interesting since it's from a "name brand"

anyway, it is difficult for me to answer what I would do, since the problem space is a bit nebulous

i think its 'days old'

fair enough, many thanks.

sorry I wasn't of greater use on that one

i've other things i'd love your take on, but happy to wait

let me see if midas has another question first

sure

midas: back to you! do you have another question?

midas: if you have another question, chime in

Ankur: in the meantime, back to you!

still working on the imageview in the grid

gosh this is FRUSTRATING

:/ sorry midas. i didn't catch the problem you were working on, but 'styling android' is a frustration i am familiar with.

haha thanks Ankur

Mark -- do you use much in the way of ORMs?

no, sorry

Are they overkill for Android, or just haven't found a good one yet?

um, it's more that my work tends to be a bit esoteric

for example, in book chapters, the only reason I would use an ORM is to demonstrate using an ORM

Right.

other work involves things like SQLCipher, for which there is limited ORM support

We tried out SQLDelight for this project, and it's been less useful than we were hoping.

I played with that some, then ran into the not-flexible-enough-to-use-SQLCipher situation

hey Mark?

It also doesn't seem to accomplish much more than 'SQL-without-the-actual-SQL'

midas: go ahead!

thanks

so I fixed the height of the ImageView

(Ankur: yes, it's designed to be a fairly thin layer over the SQL)

and found that centercrop works the best, but as soon as I give it a wrap content or 0dp + weight it breaks

did you set the dimensions to match the aspect ratio of your test image?

well as I said the width of the cell is unknown

understood

never mind

so, what does "it breaks" entail?

the height gets clipped

do the images all have the same aspect ratio, or will they vary?

same

1 h : 1.5 w

then you might switch to use PercentRelativeLayout or ConstraintLayout, instead of LinearLayout

those have options for you to indicate that a particular child should maintain its aspect ratio

ok Ill give that a shot

oooh

thats interesting

thanks

your encyclopedic knowledge astounds!

I try to be useful

ha! thats an understatement. thanks again

in that layout, I have an ImageView in a ConstraintLayout, where the height is 0dp (ConstraintLayout equivalent to match_parent, roughly) and the width is constrained via app:layout_constraintDimensionRatio="4:3"

I don't have a PercentRelativeLayout sample that uses aspect ratio handy, though I recall that it supports it

if you run into further difficulties, chime in

Ankur: do you have another question?

Yes actually, though I'll try to make this my last one :P

Is AccountManager the best option for storing API tokens and such these days?

I've never been an AccountManager fan, personally

so it depends a lot on the nature of the token and the threat vectors that concern you

if you're not worried about people rooting the device and getting the token, just using internal storage suffices for a lot of developers

if rooting is a concern, I'm not sure how much AccountManager helps, as I haven't researched how it stores the data

that's not a huge concern for us for this project, but i'd generally like to understand that better. is there something that's resilient to rooting?

using KeyStore (directly or simply for encrypting the internal storage) would be better, but it fails if the user changes their lockscreen type

I thought that had been fixed with Android 5.0, but I'm seeing reports that it still can occur

I haven't done a lot of research recently on this topic, so I'm a bit stale

interesting. independent of the data storage location, is there any value in the authenticator + accountmanager framework? (for instance, is that backed up with your google identity for reuse across devices, or similar?)

I would assume that gets backed up by Google, which is a double-edged sword

(at least -- there might be more than two edges)

on the one hand, it gets backed up

on the other hand, you're trusting Google

eh, any time the tokens leave the device (for whatever reason) that's a whole other can of worms to worry about

Mark. You rock. ConstraintLayout saved the day

thanks a ton

midas: there's probably solutions that work with the classic containers, but they tried to make this use case simpler with these newer libraries

it just dawns on me that I have my own AspectLockedFrameLayout in cwac-layouts, that was targeting this sort of scenario too

Ill check it out. But for now... if it aint broke dont fix it

anyway, we're running low on chat time, so if either of you have any remaining questions, ask!

nope Im good. Have a good one

Just a future chapter request -- I'd be very curious to know which plugins / tools you use in your own production projects. If you were to ever add a chapter about that, that'd be fascinating.

But that's it. Thanks for everything!

you are very welcome!