DBFBProfilePictureView - an improved view for facebook profile pictures

There were a number of things I wanted to fix with the Facebook provided FBProfilePictureView:

• Caching of the downloaded profile images, so the network did not get hit for every instance of the view
• Start and completion handlers to allow control of the presentation of the view (e.g. fade-in or show a UIActivityIndicatorView)
• Be notified when the download fails
• Control of when the empty profile image got shown
• Work well when the view is embedded in a UITableCellView

In addition there are a couple of other significant changes:

• The implementation has been converted to ARC
• key/value observing is used to monitor changes to profileID and pictureCropping
• no download request is made for zero size images

Installation

The simplest way to install DBFBProfilePictureView is to use CocoaPods. The homepage has a quick start guide. Add the following to your Podfile:

	platform :ios, '5.0'
	pod 'DBFBProfilePictureView', '1.1.0'

This will then automatically handle the dependencies. Also, it is a simple way to get updates.

If you want to take the manual approach then the two files needed are in the sub-directory DBFBProfilePictureView. To build them you will also need AFNetworking 1.0 or later and the Facebook iOS SDK v3.1.1. Either your project needs to be built with ARC enabled, or you will need to set the -fobjc-arc flag as described here.

Getting Started

A typical usage of the view might look like this...

Declare the property in a view controller or UITableCellView:

    @property(strong) DBFBProfilePictureView* facebookPictureView;

Import QuartzCore as we will be using CALayer:

    #import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>

Initialize the property in viewDidLoad of your view controller or init of your UITableCellView:

        self.facebookPictureView = [[DBFBProfilePictureView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(x,y,width,height)];
        //hide the view when the download starts
        self.facebookPictureView.startHandler = ^(DBFBProfilePictureView* view){
            view.layer.opacity = 0.0f;
        };
        //show the view when the download completes, or show the empty image
        self.facebookPictureView.completionHandler = ^(DBFBProfilePictureView* view, NSError* error){
            if(error) {
                view.showEmptyImage = YES;
                view.profileID = nil;
                NSLog(@"Loading profile picture failed with error: %@", error);
            } 
            [UIView animateWithDuration:0.5f animations:^{
                view.layer.opacity = 1.0f;
            }];
        };

Set the profileID when you know it:

		facebookPictureView.profileID = xxxxx;

Version history

1.0.0 - Initial release 1.1.0 - Add in-memory caching & sharing of UIImage objects for the same requested URL

License

Licensed under Apache License, Version 2.0