Any way to get a Cached UIImage from my 'Documents' directory?

Question

I know that the -imageNamed: method returns a Cached UIImage, but the problem is that my image file is stored in \'Documents\', and the -imageNamed: method seems to only search

Answer 1

I made an extension of the answer provided by rpetrich and overrode the imageName: method to add more of a drop in replacement. It searches the main bundle first and then looks in the caches directory. You could of course change the caches directory to the document directory.

@interface UIImage (CacheExtensions)
+ (UIImage *)imageNamed:(NSString *)name;
+ (void)clearCache;
@end

#import "UIImage+CacheExtensions.h"

static NSMutableDictionary *UIImageCache;

@implementation UIImage (CacheExtensions)

+ (UIImage *)imageNamed:(NSString *)name 
{
    id result;
    if (!UIImageCache)
        UIImageCache = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
    else {
        result = [UIImageCache objectForKey:name];
        if (result) return result;
    }

    // First, check the main bundle for the image
    NSString *imagePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:name ofType:nil];

    result = [UIImage imageWithContentsOfFileimagePath];
    if(result) {
        [UIImageCache setObject:result forKey:name];
        return result;
    }

    // If not found, search for the image in the caches directory
    NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSCachesDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES); 
    NSString *cachesImagePath = [[paths lastObject] stringByAppendingPathComponent:name];

    result = [UIImage imageWithContentsOfFile:cachesImagePath];
    if(result) {
        [UIImageCache setObject:result forKey:name];
        return result;
    }

    return nil;
}

+ (void)clearCache
{
    [UIImageCache removeAllObjects];
}

@end