I had this issue and implemented lruCache. I believe you need API 12 and above or use the compatiblity v4 library. lurCache is fast memory, but it also has a budget, so if you're worried about that you can use a diskcache... It's all described in Caching Bitmaps.
I'll now provide my implementation which is a singleton I call from anywhere like this:
//Where the first is a string and the other is a imageview to load.
DownloadImageTask.getInstance().loadBitmap(avatarURL, iv_avatar);
Here's the ideal code to cache and then call the above in getView of an adapter when retrieving the web image:
public class DownloadImageTask {
private LruCache<String, Bitmap> mMemoryCache;
/* Create a singleton class to call this from multiple classes */
private static DownloadImageTask instance = null;
public static DownloadImageTask getInstance() {
if (instance == null) {
instance = new DownloadImageTask();
}
return instance;
}
//Lock the constructor from public instances
private DownloadImageTask() {
// Get max available VM memory, exceeding this amount will throw an
// OutOfMemory exception. Stored in kilobytes as LruCache takes an
// int in its constructor.
final int maxMemory = (int) (Runtime.getRuntime().maxMemory() / 1024);
// Use 1/8th of the available memory for this memory cache.
final int cacheSize = maxMemory / 8;
mMemoryCache = new LruCache<String, Bitmap>(cacheSize) {
@Override
protected int sizeOf(String key, Bitmap bitmap) {
// The cache size will be measured in kilobytes rather than
// number of items.
return bitmap.getByteCount() / 1024;
}
};
}
public void loadBitmap(String avatarURL, ImageView imageView) {
final String imageKey = String.valueOf(avatarURL);
final Bitmap bitmap = getBitmapFromMemCache(imageKey);
if (bitmap != null) {
imageView.setImageBitmap(bitmap);
} else {
imageView.setImageResource(R.drawable.ic_launcher);
new DownloadImageTaskViaWeb(imageView).execute(avatarURL);
}
}
private void addBitmapToMemoryCache(String key, Bitmap bitmap) {
if (getBitmapFromMemCache(key) == null) {
mMemoryCache.put(key, bitmap);
}
}
private Bitmap getBitmapFromMemCache(String key) {
return mMemoryCache.get(key);
}
/* A background process that opens a http stream and decodes a web image. */
class DownloadImageTaskViaWeb extends AsyncTask<String, Void, Bitmap> {
ImageView bmImage;
public DownloadImageTaskViaWeb(ImageView bmImage) {
this.bmImage = bmImage;
}
protected Bitmap doInBackground(String... urls) {
String urldisplay = urls[0];
Bitmap mIcon = null;
try {
InputStream in = new java.net.URL(urldisplay).openStream();
mIcon = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(in);
}
catch (Exception e) {
Log.e("Error", e.getMessage());
e.printStackTrace();
}
addBitmapToMemoryCache(String.valueOf(urldisplay), mIcon);
return mIcon;
}
/* After decoding we update the view on the main UI. */
protected void onPostExecute(Bitmap result) {
bmImage.setImageBitmap(result);
}
}
}