Solving GridView.builder and Image.network Performance Issues in Flutter

Описание: Discover effective strategies to enhance the performance of your Flutter app when displaying images using GridView.builder and Image.network
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This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/65357216/ asked by the user 'raitonoberu' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/14384375/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/65357502/ provided by the user 'Stefano Amorelli' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/9367299/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

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Enhancing Performance of GridView.builder and Image.network in Flutter

When developing apps with Flutter, displaying a grid of images efficiently is a common requirement. However, some developers encounter serious performance issues, especially when working with high-resolution images from APIs like picsum.photos. Let’s explore the problem in detail and discuss a solution to enhance your app’s performance.

The Problem: Poor Performance When Displaying Images

You might be experiencing significant performance issues (15-20 fps during scrolling) due to the way images are handled. Here's a simplified perspective on the issue:

Heavy Image Files: The API returns high-quality images that are significantly larger than the display size. When displayed, these images are resized to fit the grid layout, but the original sizes still lead to strain on the performance.

Multiple Requests: Sometimes, retrieving many high-resolution images can overwhelm the app's resources, leading to crashes or sluggishness.

Consider this example code where images are fetched from the picsum.photos API and displayed in a GridView:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

This approach might work but comes with its performance pitfalls, primarily due to large image sizes.

The Solution: Dynamic Image Resizing

To enhance your app's performance, you can dynamically create image URLs that request images in a smaller size, thus avoiding performance bottlenecks. Let's break down this solution:

Retrieve Smaller Images

Instead of fetching the original high-quality images, you can generate URLs that fetch smaller images tailored to your grid size. Here's how you can do it:

Modify the Image URL Logic: Instead of using static URLs, use a method that constructs random image URLs with specified dimensions. This employs smaller, adequately-sized images.

Updated Code Example

Here’s how the modified code might look after implementing the solution:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Avoids performance issues associated with downloading high-resolution images.

Images are fetched in the size suited for display, leading to improved scrolling experiences.

Cons:

Requires multiple HTTP requests, one for each image, instead of a single request for multiple images.

Conclusion: Optimize for Performance

While it may seem challenging to display images efficiently in your Flutter application, adjusting how images are loaded and displayed can lead to substantial performance improvements. By generating dynamic URLs that request smaller images, you can significantly enhance the user experience, making your app smoother and more responsive.

By following these strategies, you can successfully tackle performance issues related to GridView.builder and Image.network when working with images in Flutter.