Feature request: easy way to pre-cache by url

[lukepighetti]

We'd love to be able to fire off a command to pre-cache a Firestore image url.

ie

final url = "gs://vgl-xxxa.appspot.com/users/xxxxx/avatars/xx-xx-xx-a2fb-xx.jpg";
FirebaseImageCacheManager.precache(url);

[yelkamel]

that should be great

[lukepighetti]

@mattreid1 if you can recommend a strategy to implement this I will get it done and make a PR

[mattreid1]

In one of my tests I actually run something like this if I'm not mistaken....

void setBytes() async {
  Uint8List imageBytes =
      (await FirebaseImage('gs://xxxxxxxxx.appspot.com/xxxx.jpg')
          .getBytes()); // This fetches the image 

  setState(() {
    bLength = imageBytes.length;
  });
}

Would something like this achieve what you need?

[lukepighetti]

Check the PR I made, #27

[mattreid1]

Take a look at the PR I just made #33.

It's async, avoids logic duplication, very simple, null safe and throws a descriptive error if the developer has accidentally disabled caching.

You can use it by calling this anywhere in the code.

FirebaseImage('gs://xxxxxxxxx.appspot.com/xxxx.jpg').preCache();

Might be worth me disabling the max file size limit for pre-caches (or setting it high e.g. 50MB). Thoughts?

If you're happy this solves the issue, I'll publish this.

[lukepighetti]

I'm not able to test it right this moment but if that does cache the image so it's instant retrieval the next time you make a FirebaseImage with that URL than I much prefer your solution and I'd be happy for my PR and this issue to be closed.