Need an example of HttpResponseCache in Android

Question

Hi I am trying to use the HttpResponseCache introduced in Android 4.The docs do talk clearly about how to install the cache but I am at a complete loss on how to cache Images downloaded from the net.Earlier I was using the DiskLruCache to cache them. Would anyone point me towards some examples of working code where HttpResponseCache has been used..

Edit:- Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong here:-

MainActivity.java
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
    final long httpCacheSize = 10 * 1024 * 1024; // 10 MiB
    final File httpCacheDir = new File(getCacheDir(), "http");
    try {
        Class.forName("android.net.http.HttpResponseCache")
            .getMethod("install", File.class, long.class)
            .invoke(null, httpCacheDir, httpCacheSize);
        Log.v(TAG,"cache set up");
    } catch (Exception httpResponseCacheNotAvailable) {
        Log.v(TAG, "android.net.http.HttpResponseCache not available, probably because we're running on a pre-ICS version of Android. Using com.integralblue.httpresponsecache.HttpHttpResponseCache.");
        try{
            com.integralblue.httpresponsecache.HttpResponseCache.install(httpCacheDir, httpCacheSize);
        }catch(Exception e){
            Log.v(TAG, "Failed to set up com.integralblue.httpresponsecache.HttpResponseCache");
        }
    }
    TheMainListFrag gf=(TheMainListFrag) getSupportFragmentManager().findFragmentByTag("thelistfrags");
    if(gf==null){
        gf=TheMainListFrag.newInstance();
        FragmentTransaction ft=getSupportFragmentManager().beginTransaction();
        ft.replace(R.id.thelefty, gf,"thelistfrags");
        ft.commit();
    }
}

Then in the loader of TheMainListFrag, I do the below:-

public ArrayList<HashMap<String,String>> loadInBackground() {
    String datafromServer = null;
    ArrayList<HashMap<String,String>> al = new ArrayList<HashMap<String,String>>();
    try {
        String url = "someurl";
        HttpURLConnection urlConnection = (HttpURLConnection) new URL(url).openConnection();

        urlConnection.setRequestProperty("Accept", "application/json");
        InputStream is = new BufferedInputStream(urlConnection.getInputStream());
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is));
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        String line = null;
        while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
            sb.append(line);
        }
        datafromServer=sb.toString();
        Log.v("fromthread",datafromServer);
        // etc 
                    //etc

    } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (Exception e) {
        Log.v("fromthread", e.getClass() + "--" + e.getMessage());
    }

    return al;
}

When i am connected to internet, it works fine, and in the directory http-the cache directory named above, i can see the files too. But when I am not connected to the internet, the data refuses to load.

When i load images from the net, i see the cache files named as .tmp , which i believe are termed as dirty as per DiskLruCache.

Please let me know if there is any other info that you want me to provide

Answer 1

From the section Force a Cache Response on the HttpResponseCache documentation:

Sometimes you'll want to show resources if they are available immediately, but not otherwise. This can be used so your application can show something while waiting for the latest data to be downloaded. To restrict a request to locally-cached resources, add the only-if-cached directive:

try {
    connection.addRequestProperty("Cache-Control", "only-if-cached");
    InputStream cached = connection.getInputStream();
    // the resource was cached! show it
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
    // the resource was not cached
}

This technique works even better in situations where a stale response is better than no response. To permit stale cached responses, use the max-stale directive with the maximum staleness in seconds:

int maxStale = 60 * 60 * 24 * 28; // tolerate 4-weeks stale
connection.addRequestProperty("Cache-Control", "max-stale=" + maxStale);

Answer 2

When you enable HttpResponseCache, all HttpUrlConnection queries will be cached. You can't use it to cache arbitrary data, so I'd recommend keep using DiskLruCache for that.

Answer 3

In my case HttpResponseCache wasn't actually caching anything. What fixed it was simply:

connection.setUseCaches(true);

(This must be called on the HttpURLConnection before establishing connection.)

For finer grained control, max-stale can be used as Jesse Wilson pointed out.