Background Upload

Note: This is an experimental feature. Please report any issues to support@softwyer.com

Introduction

With release 3.2 we've added an option to enable the uploading of images in the background. This change will significantly improve the speed at which you can create and save items, as you will no longer have to wait for the images to be uploaded. 

This change also allows for some item creation capability when you have no network connectivity.

How does it work?

When an item is created we now capture the images to be stored and save them to your device without uploading them to the cloud. 

After a few seconds, a background process will be triggered that starts to upload the images to the cloud. 

When viewing an item that has images waiting to be uploaded, you will see a small cloud icon in the centre of the image. When an image is being uploaded you will see a progress bar at the bottom of the image.

Because this is an experimental feature, we've disabled it behind a toggle. To enable it, open the navigation drawer and tap the 'Background uploading' checkbox. You can disable this feature by tapping the toggle button again.

Things to be aware of

• This only affects items and containers. Collection images are still uploaded in the foreground.

• Item creation is possible when there is no network connection. However, we'd urge you use some caution until you have tested that this works on your device.

• Editing an item whilst offline and changing images is not currently supported. There are some network calls being made to update the thumbnail image.

• There may be some jank (app slowdown) when uploading as Firebase Storage does not support true background uploading.

• The application will need to be running to upload images in the background. The background upload process will automatically start when you open the My Collections application.

• If you have allowed other users to edit items in your collection, they could change the images in the item whilst it is wating to upload them. When the images are eventually uploaded, they could overwrite the other users changes. You may want to disable this feature if you are likely to experience this scenario.

• For shared collections, or when viewing the collection on another device, the item images will not be available and a cloud uploading placeholder image will be shown in it's place, see below (for users not using v3.2 they will see an empty or error placeholder).