MIDlet for downloading image from the web

J2ME provides several ways for creating an Image object:

• Image.createImage(String)
• Image.createImage(byte[], int, int)
• Image.createImage(InputStream)

 If you want to download an image from the web to your local J2ME application, you - of course - have to establish an HttpConnection and retrieve the image with a simple GET.
As I noticed, most programmers then open the InputStream by calling httpConn.openInputStream() and process it inside a while loop, storing the read bytes in a ByteArrayOutputStream or similar for then being able to create the image, using the 2nd method illustrated at the beginning. This approach is shown here for instance.
But knowing the 3rd method for loading an image directly from an InputStream, this could be achieved in a much easier way:

public void run() {
 HttpConnection connection;
 try {
  connection = (HttpConnection) Connector.open(this.imageUrl);
  connection.setRequestMethod(HttpConnection.GET);
   
  Image img = Image.createImage(connection.openInputStream());

  //do something with the image
 } catch (IOException e) {
  // TODO Auto-generated catch block
  e.printStackTrace();
 }
}

Note, the operation of establishing an HttpConnection, fetching the image etc is done within a separate thread (see best practices). Of course the code above needs some tuning, this is just a simple example to demonstrate the topic.

Here's a MIDlet which follows this approach:

package com.tests.images;

import java.io.IOException;
import javax.microedition.io.Connector;
import javax.microedition.io.HttpConnection;
import javax.microedition.lcdui.Command;
import javax.microedition.lcdui.CommandListener;
import javax.microedition.lcdui.Displayable;
import javax.microedition.lcdui.Form;
import javax.microedition.lcdui.Image;
import javax.microedition.lcdui.TextField;
import javax.microedition.lcdui.Ticker;

public class ImageForm extends Form implements CommandListener {
 private TextField imageUrlField;
 private Command loadImage;

 public ImageForm() {
  super("Image Viewer");
  init();
 }

 private void init() {
  imageUrlField = new TextField("Image URL", "", 999, TextField.URL);
  this.append(imageUrlField);

  loadImage = new Command("Load Image", Command.SCREEN, 1);
  this.addCommand(loadImage);

  this.setCommandListener(this);
 }

 public void showLoadedImage(Image image) {
  if(this.size() == 2)
   this.delete(1);
  this.imageUrlField.setString("");
  this.append(image);
  this.setTicker(null);
 }

 public void commandAction(Command c, Displayable d) {
  if (c == loadImage) {
   this.setTicker(new Ticker("loading image"));
   
   ImageLoaderManager imgMan = new ImageLoaderManager(imageUrlField.getString(), this);
   Thread t = new Thread(imgMan);
   t.start();
  }
 }

}

class ImageLoaderManager implements Runnable {
 private String imageUrl;
 private ImageForm parent;

 ImageLoaderManager(String imageUrl, ImageForm parent) {
  this.imageUrl = imageUrl;
  this.parent = parent;
 }

 public void run() {
  HttpConnection connection;
  try {
   connection = (HttpConnection) Connector.open(this.imageUrl);
   connection.setRequestMethod(HttpConnection.GET);
   
   parent.showLoadedImage(Image.createImage(connection.openInputStream()));
  } catch (IOException e) {
   // TODO Auto-generated catch block
   e.printStackTrace();
  }
 }
}

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