Question

Fastest way to load Images in WPF

Asked by: ALawrence007

Hi to all,

I have a small WPF application that loads Departments and Items from my database. I have images for both departments and items, but it seems to me that the images takes a very long time to load.
What is the fastest and best way to load images in WPF. How do I load images asynchronously? If at all possible?

Any help would be appreciated. Code to load departments below:

Thanks

For Each Department In DepartmentView
                    Dim DepartmentName As String = Department.Name
                    Dim DepartmentID As Integer = Department.ID
                    Dim DepartmentCode As String = Department.Code
                    Dim DepartmentPicture As String = "https://imageserver/upload/SupplyStore/DepImages/orig/" & Department.PicName
MyDepartments.Add(New StoreDeps(DepartmentID, DepartmentName, _
                                                    DepartmentPicture, PicNameonly))
Next

                                  
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Asked On
2009-08-06 at 05:54:07ID24631188
Tags

WPF

,

Visual Studio

Topics

WPF and Silverlight

,

Microsoft Visual Basic.Net

,

Visual Studio

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
9

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Answers

 

by: LordWabbitPosted on 2009-08-07 at 05:05:03ID: 25041792

are the pictures of different formats and sizes - are they being reformatted each time they are loaded from the database?  Is the image server slow?  Try timing the length it takes to get the image from the image server, that might be what is taking the longest time, and that means you can't really do much to your code to speed that up, EXCEPT to cache the images locally, but that means when an image is changed on the image server your application will not pick up the new one.  A way around that is to flush images older than one hour out of your cache (which can be done with a seperate application).

 

by: ALawrence007Posted on 2009-08-07 at 09:41:33ID: 25044615

The images are different in size, but not formats.

I don't have an issue if the images takes long to load, but is there maybe something I can do to not make the application unresponsive? If I can do something of that sort I think I should be O.K.

 

by: LordWabbitPosted on 2009-08-07 at 13:53:24ID: 25046854

Well threading is the way to for that then, but have you considered placing a few application.doevents inbetween certain tasks or in loops

 

by: ALawrence007Posted on 2009-08-09 at 08:37:17ID: 25054530

I have not. Can you explain a little about that? I am in the process of teaching this to myself and I am no pro in Development. Any Samples or online resources that I can use would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for the help so far LordWabbit

 

by: LordWabbitPosted on 2009-08-09 at 10:02:15ID: 25054847

windows applications are usually single threaded, so when they are busy processing information or whatever the application will become unresponsive.  Application.DoEvents() will process any mouse clicks scroll wheen movement etc.  and make the application more responsive, HOWEVER while this does not make the application multithreaded it will allow a user to click "Download" again, unless you have disabled it on first click.  The application will still respond to events but care must be taken about users abusing the added functionality (ie. disable click once type buttons)  This will also allow the form to redraw itselft, allowing for progress bar updates etc.  Well to be honest you can update the progress bar as much as you like, but without a call to Application.DoEvents() the form will not redraw itself and your progress bar is useless.  Care should be given about the frequency of calling the event however, since it does have a high overhead.  I will send some samples as soon as I can.

 

by: ALawrence007Posted on 2009-08-09 at 12:20:54ID: 25055514

Thanks LordWabbit!

 

by: ALawrence007Posted on 2009-08-11 at 05:40:20ID: 25068261

LordWabbit,

I decided to go with Threading and was wondering if you could help me in this regard. I got the application to work using threading, but it does not display any pictures untill all of them are ready. Can I display images as they become available?

If you could help me with this last question I would really be greatful!

Public WithEvents DepartmentLoader As New BackgroundWorker
Private Sub DepartmentLoader_DoWork(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.ComponentModel.DoWorkEventArgs) Handles DepartmentLoader.DoWork
LoadDepartments()
End Sub
Delegate Sub ListViewContentCallback(ByVal LstView As Controls.ListView)
Dim MyDepartments As New ObservableCollection(Of StoreDeps)
Private Sub ListViewContent(ByVal LstView As Controls.ListView)
If Not Dispatcher.CheckAccess() Then
Dispatcher.Invoke(Windows.Threading.DispatcherPriority.Normal, _
New ListViewContentCallback(AddressOf ListViewContent), LstView)
Return
End If
LstView.ItemsSource = MyDepartments
End Sub
Private Sub LoadDepartments()
Try
MyDepartments = ItemsFromClass.LoadStoreDeps
'Old code
'DepListview.ItemsSource = MyDepartments
Call ListViewContent(DepListview)
Catch ex As Exception
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message, "Error Loading the Departments" _
, MessageBoxButton.OK _
, MessageBoxImage.Information)
End Try
End Sub

                                              
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by: LordWabbitPosted on 2009-08-11 at 08:04:41ID: 25069883

All you need to do is call Application.DoEvents so that the parent thread can update it's display (ie. the form).  Not sure exactly where you would place it in your code excerpt (will need to see some more of the code).  You might want to take a look at the System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker it handles a lot of the complications around threading for you.  Also don't forget that you cannot update the main window thread from a child thread without marshalling across threads, and marshalling has a high overhead and might well negate the benifits of multithreading in the first place.

 

by: ALawrence007Posted on 2009-08-13 at 09:05:46ID: 31612389

Thanks LordWabbit

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