Memory Warning in UICollectionView (with image) - memory-management

Question

I am currently working on a UICollectionView with a lot of images. However, it sometimes crashes in this view with memory warning. I am using AFNetworking and UIImageView+AFNetworking category to set image through setImageWithURL: method. One issue can be caching. I am not sure if AFNetworking deals with image caching. Anyway, is there a way to optimize this code in terms of memory management? Or if I am to implement didReceiveMemoryWarning method in this view controller, what can be put in this method? I attach the code for cellForItemAtIndexPath for this collection view.
- (UICollectionViewCell *)collectionView:(UICollectionView *)collectionView cellForItemAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
UICollectionViewCell *cell = [collectionView dequeueReusableCellWithReuseIdentifier:#"RecipeCell" forIndexPath:indexPath];
// setting the image view for the cell using AFNetworking. Does this do caching automatically?
UIImageView *recipeImageView = (UIImageView *)[cell viewWithTag:6];
if (PRODUCTION) {
[recipeImageView setImageWithURL:[[self.recipes objectAtIndex:indexPath.row] objectForKey:#"recipe_image"] placeholderImage:[UIImage imageNamed:#"default_recipe_picture.png"]];
} else {
[recipeImageView setImageWithURL:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"http://localhost:5000/%#", [[self.recipes objectAtIndex:indexPath.row] objectForKey:#"recipe_image"]] placeholderImage:[UIImage imageNamed:#"default_recipe_picture.png"]];
}
// configure the back of the cell. fill all the info.
UITextView *recipeNameView = (UITextView *)[cell viewWithTag:8];
recipeNameView.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#", [[self.recipes objectAtIndex:indexPath.row] objectForKey:#"recipe_name"]];
UILabel *recipeNameLabel = (UILabel *)[cell viewWithTag:2];
recipeNameLabel.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#", [[self.recipes objectAtIndex:indexPath.row] objectForKey:#"recipe_name"]];
NSDictionary *user = [[self.recipes objectAtIndex:indexPath.row] objectForKey:#"user"];
UIButton *chefNameButton = (UIButton *)[cell viewWithTag:3];
[chefNameButton setTitle:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%# %#", [user objectForKey:#"first_name"], [user objectForKey:#"last_name"]] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
NSMutableArray *missingIngredientsStringArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
NSArray *missingIngredients = [[self.recipes objectAtIndex:indexPath.row] objectForKey:#"missing_ingredients"];
for (NSDictionary *missingIngredient in missingIngredients) {
[missingIngredientsStringArray addObject:[missingIngredient objectForKey:#"name"]];
}
NSString *missingIngredientsString = [missingIngredientsStringArray componentsJoinedByString:#","];
UITextView *missingIngredientsView = (UITextView *)[cell viewWithTag:4];
missingIngredientsView.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%u Missing Ingredients: %#", missingIngredients.count, missingIngredientsString];
// configure the front of the cell. chef name button and missing ingredients and likes on front view
UIButton *frontNameButton = (UIButton *)[cell viewWithTag:11];
[frontNameButton setTitle:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%# %#", [user objectForKey:#"first_name"], [user objectForKey:#"last_name"]] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
[frontNameButton sizeToFit];
frontNameButton.frame = CGRectMake(160 - [frontNameButton.titleLabel.text sizeWithFont:[UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:13]].width - 7, frontNameButton.frame.origin.y, frontNameButton.frame.size.width, frontNameButton.frame.size.height);
UILabel *likesLabel = (UILabel *)[cell viewWithTag:9];
likesLabel.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%# likes", [[self.recipes objectAtIndex:indexPath.row] objectForKey:#"likes"]];
UIButton *missingIngredientsButton = (UIButton *)[cell viewWithTag:12];
[missingIngredientsButton setBackgroundImage:[UIImage imageNamed:#"badge_green.png"] forState:UIControlStateSelected];
if (missingIngredients.count == 0) {
missingIngredientsButton.selected = YES;
[missingIngredientsButton setTitle:#"" forState:UIControlStateNormal];
} else {
missingIngredientsButton.selected = NO;
[missingIngredientsButton setTitle:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%u", missingIngredients.count] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
}
// make back view invisible.
UIView *backView = [cell viewWithTag:1];
UIView *frontView = [cell viewWithTag:5];
frontView.alpha = 1.0;
backView.alpha = 0;
// adding flip gesture recognizers
UIView *flipView1 = [cell viewWithTag:12];
UIView *flipView2 = [cell viewWithTag:1];
UITapGestureRecognizer *flipGestureRecognizer1 = [[UITapGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithTarget:self action:#selector(flipCell:)];
UITapGestureRecognizer *flipGestureRecognizer2 = [[UITapGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithTarget:self action:#selector(flipCell:)];
[flipView1 addGestureRecognizer:flipGestureRecognizer1];
[flipView2 addGestureRecognizer:flipGestureRecognizer2];
return cell;
}
[Edit] I attach a screenshot of my Instruments run.
You can see that memory allocation increases as I just push segue and press back button repeatedly. Things that just keep increasing are CFData, CALayer, CABackingStore, UITableView. I doubt these are things that are created after segue, and they are not being released... Please help!

Answer 1

You're probably going to want some sort of image caching strategy to avoid re-downloading images. And UIImageView+AFNetworking category does cache images for you. But you may also have the responses being cached in the in-memory URL cache, which in this case is somewhat redundant.
So you might consider reducing or turning off the in-memory URL cache. I had the issue you're describing and the following reduced my memory issues quite a bit:
NSURLCache *sharedCache = [[NSURLCache alloc] initWithMemoryCapacity:0 diskCapacity:0 diskPath:nil];
[NSURLCache setSharedURLCache:sharedCache];

Answer 2

AFNetworking automatically stores images in an NSCache collection, which automatically removes some or all of the images from memory on a low memory warning. AFNetworking is probably not your issue.
In fact, I don't think displaying images is your issue unless you're downloading lots of very large images and displaying them simultaneously. (If this is the case, you should try optimizing your images for display on the device so they don't need to be resized.)
One issue I see is that you are adding a gesture recognizer to the cell every time it comes into the view, but cells are reused, so when a cell comes in again you are adding unnecessary gesture recognizers to it. You could resolve this by subclassing UITableViewCell and assigning the gesture recognizers as properties. You could also resolve this by checking flipView1 and flipView2 to see if they have gesture recognizers attached before adding them. (I'm not sure if this is enough to cause a memory warning though.)
I'd recommend going to Build -> Profile and selecting the Allocations instrument. On the left, select Objective C only, and hide system calls. Then, scroll through your collection view and look at the instrument to see what's taking up all the memory.
UPDATE
Here's a screenshot of the Allocations tool: