FastCachedImageConfig.init() has performance issues

[windinternet]

I've been using this library for a while, and I noticed that my application's startup time became significantly slower. After debugging, I discovered that the issue was due to the initialization of image caching with Hive, which was consuming a lot of time. Upon further investigation, I found the following issues with the library:

The way cache data is stored is inefficient. The actual image data should not be fully stored in Hive. Instead, only the image keys and local file paths should be stored. Otherwise, Hive will load all contents into memory during initialization, which dramatically increases the startup time if the cache contains a large number of images. This is unacceptable.

Image data should be loaded on-demand, and during the app's first launch, only the image keys or indexes should be loaded into memory.

When a valid file is provided to the component, but it's not a valid image file, it causes abnormal growth in storage space. I found this issue is more easily triggered when frequently switching between a problematic page and other pages.

As users interact more or consume more content, the storage space used by the cache inevitably grows. The increase in storage space then leads to longer startup times, which is truly unacceptable from a user experience standpoint.

That being said, this is still a great library, and I've used it with appreciation for the author and contributors. Although I’m unable to contribute due to some reasons, I wanted to provide feedback on these issues that I’ve encountered!

[CHRISTOPANANJICKAL]

Hii @windinternet, Thanks for your feedback. I have been planing to update this package for a long but I am not getting enough time. I have previously planned of using another DB which is more efficine than Hive and in a relational manner to reduce the starup loads. I will make the planned updates as the time permits.