Apps Looking for Example: App that Updates Images from Server

[evenmonkeys]

I've tried so many tutorials to get this working right, but I just can't get it to work. I was curious if anyone could point me toward an example that I could backward engineer.

I have an application that currently has about 15 groups of photos. Every week, I've been updating the application with a new group of photos, but I have to upload the entire thing, and they have to download the entire thing. I want to be able to make it so when a new group of photos is available, they just have to click a button inside the app that downloads the "album" as well as all of the photos for that album.

It's really not that difficult of a task, I don't believe. I just can't figure it out.

Any help would be amazing. Thanks.

 

[jonbonazza]

Do you have a server set up already? If so, what protocol does it use? How are you planning to interface with the server? There really isn't enough information to go on here.

 

[evenmonkeys]

That's what I want to know. If I need to set up a server, that's not an issue. I'm familiar with mysql more than anything else, but I learn quickly when I see examples that pertain to what I'm looking for. I can either have the images available individually, or I can zip each album.

Examples I'm finding either don't work at all.. or they're not what I am looking for. When someone downloads the application, I want them to see album covers, press and download that album and it remain on their device until they want to get rid of it.

 

[bhaalbg]

Can you post some of the applications you have.

Generally I would do something like that:
1. setup a server with the following services (usually using restful services and json data format)
- provide a list of all albums
- provide a list of the urls of all photos in an album

2. at startup/sync/whatever_other_event_you_want download the albums' list -if you have some form of versionning you could get only the new ones
3. store the new albums locally
4. load the images that currently are visible.
- you could either use something like UrlImageViewHelper
- or load the images first, store them locally and populate the image views from your local storage.

Which of these steps is giving you troubles?