Display Animated GIF

Question

I want to display animated GIF images in my aplication. As I found out the hard way Android doesn\'t support animated GIF natively.

However it can display animations

Answer 1

The easy way to display animated GIF directly from URL to your app layout is to use WebView class.

Step 1: In your layout XML

<WebView
android:id="@+id/webView"
android:layout_width="50dp"
android:layout_height="50dp"
/>

Step 2: In your Activity

WebView wb;
wb = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webView);
wb.loadUrl("https://.......);

Step 3: In your Manifest.XML make Internet permission

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

Step 4: In case you want to make your GIF background transparent and make GIF fit to your Layout

wb.setBackgroundColor(Color.TRANSPARENT);
wb.getSettings().setLoadWithOverviewMode(true);
wb.getSettings().setUseWideViewPort(true);

Answer 2

public class Test extends GraphicsActivity {

  @Override
  protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(new SampleView(this));
  }

  private static class SampleView extends View {
    private Bitmap mBitmap;
    private Bitmap mBitmap2;
    private Bitmap mBitmap3;
    private Bitmap mBitmap4;
    private Drawable mDrawable;

    private Movie mMovie;
    private long mMovieStart;

    // Set to false to use decodeByteArray
    private static final boolean DECODE_STREAM = true;

    private static byte[] streamToBytes(InputStream is) {
      ByteArrayOutputStream os = new ByteArrayOutputStream(1024);
      byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
      int len;
      try {
        while ((len = is.read(buffer)) >= 0) {
          os.write(buffer, 0, len);
        }
      } catch (java.io.IOException e) {
      }
      return os.toByteArray();
    }

    public SampleView(Context context) {
      super(context);
      setFocusable(true);

      java.io.InputStream is;
      is = context.getResources().openRawResource(R.drawable.icon);

      BitmapFactory.Options opts = new BitmapFactory.Options();
      Bitmap bm;

      opts.inJustDecodeBounds = true;
      bm = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(is, null, opts);

      // now opts.outWidth and opts.outHeight are the dimension of the
      // bitmap, even though bm is null

      opts.inJustDecodeBounds = false; // this will request the bm
      opts.inSampleSize = 4; // scaled down by 4
      bm = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(is, null, opts);

      mBitmap = bm;

      // decode an image with transparency
      is = context.getResources().openRawResource(R.drawable.icon);
      mBitmap2 = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(is);

      // create a deep copy of it using getPixels() into different configs
      int w = mBitmap2.getWidth();
      int h = mBitmap2.getHeight();
      int[] pixels = new int[w * h];
      mBitmap2.getPixels(pixels, 0, w, 0, 0, w, h);
      mBitmap3 = Bitmap.createBitmap(pixels, 0, w, w, h,
          Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888);
      mBitmap4 = Bitmap.createBitmap(pixels, 0, w, w, h,
          Bitmap.Config.ARGB_4444);

      mDrawable = context.getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.icon);
      mDrawable.setBounds(150, 20, 300, 100);

      is = context.getResources().openRawResource(R.drawable.animated_gif);

      if (DECODE_STREAM) {
        mMovie = Movie.decodeStream(is);
      } else {
        byte[] array = streamToBytes(is);
        mMovie = Movie.decodeByteArray(array, 0, array.length);
      }
    }

    @Override
    protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
      canvas.drawColor(0xFFCCCCCC);

      Paint p = new Paint();
      p.setAntiAlias(true);

      canvas.drawBitmap(mBitmap, 10, 10, null);
      canvas.drawBitmap(mBitmap2, 10, 170, null);
      canvas.drawBitmap(mBitmap3, 110, 170, null);
      canvas.drawBitmap(mBitmap4, 210, 170, null);

      mDrawable.draw(canvas);

      long now = android.os.SystemClock.uptimeMillis();
      if (mMovieStart == 0) { // first time
        mMovieStart = now;
      }
      if (mMovie != null) {
        int dur = mMovie.duration();
        if (dur == 0) {
          dur = 1000;
        }
        int relTime = (int) ((now - mMovieStart) % dur);
        mMovie.setTime(relTime);
        mMovie.draw(canvas, getWidth() - mMovie.width(), getHeight()
            - mMovie.height());
        invalidate();
      }
    }
  }
}

class GraphicsActivity extends Activity {
  // set to true to test Picture
  private static final boolean TEST_PICTURE = false;

  @Override
  protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
  }

  @Override
  public void setContentView(View view) {
    if (TEST_PICTURE) {
      ViewGroup vg = new PictureLayout(this);
      vg.addView(view);
      view = vg;
    }

    super.setContentView(view);
  }
}

class PictureLayout extends ViewGroup {
  private final Picture mPicture = new Picture();

  public PictureLayout(Context context) {
    super(context);
  }

  public PictureLayout(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
    super(context, attrs);
  }

  @Override
  public void addView(View child) {
    if (getChildCount() > 1) {
      throw new IllegalStateException(
          "PictureLayout can host only one direct child");
    }

    super.addView(child);
  }

  @Override
  public void addView(View child, int index) {
    if (getChildCount() > 1) {
      throw new IllegalStateException(
          "PictureLayout can host only one direct child");
    }

    super.addView(child, index);
  }

  @Override
  public void addView(View child, LayoutParams params) {
    if (getChildCount() > 1) {
      throw new IllegalStateException(
          "PictureLayout can host only one direct child");
    }

    super.addView(child, params);
  }

  @Override
  public void addView(View child, int index, LayoutParams params) {
    if (getChildCount() > 1) {
      throw new IllegalStateException(
          "PictureLayout can host only one direct child");
    }

    super.addView(child, index, params);
  }

  @Override
  protected LayoutParams generateDefaultLayoutParams() {
    return new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,
        LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT);
  }

  @Override
  protected void onMeasure(int widthMeasureSpec, int heightMeasureSpec) {
    final int count = getChildCount();

    int maxHeight = 0;
    int maxWidth = 0;

    for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
      final View child = getChildAt(i);
      if (child.getVisibility() != GONE) {
        measureChild(child, widthMeasureSpec, heightMeasureSpec);
      }
    }

    maxWidth += getPaddingLeft() + getPaddingRight();
    maxHeight += getPaddingTop() + getPaddingBottom();

    Drawable drawable = getBackground();
    if (drawable != null) {
      maxHeight = Math.max(maxHeight, drawable.getMinimumHeight());
      maxWidth = Math.max(maxWidth, drawable.getMinimumWidth());
    }

    setMeasuredDimension(resolveSize(maxWidth, widthMeasureSpec),
        resolveSize(maxHeight, heightMeasureSpec));
  }

  private void drawPict(Canvas canvas, int x, int y, int w, int h, float sx,
      float sy) {
    canvas.save();
    canvas.translate(x, y);
    canvas.clipRect(0, 0, w, h);
    canvas.scale(0.5f, 0.5f);
    canvas.scale(sx, sy, w, h);
    canvas.drawPicture(mPicture);
    canvas.restore();
  }

  @Override
  protected void dispatchDraw(Canvas canvas) {
    super.dispatchDraw(mPicture.beginRecording(getWidth(), getHeight()));
    mPicture.endRecording();

    int x = getWidth() / 2;
    int y = getHeight() / 2;

    if (false) {
      canvas.drawPicture(mPicture);
    } else {
      drawPict(canvas, 0, 0, x, y, 1, 1);
      drawPict(canvas, x, 0, x, y, -1, 1);
      drawPict(canvas, 0, y, x, y, 1, -1);
      drawPict(canvas, x, y, x, y, -1, -1);
    }
  }

  @Override
  public ViewParent invalidateChildInParent(int[] location, Rect dirty) {
    location[0] = getLeft();
    location[1] = getTop();
    dirty.set(0, 0, getWidth(), getHeight());
    return getParent();
  }

  @Override
  protected void onLayout(boolean changed, int l, int t, int r, int b) {
    final int count = super.getChildCount();

    for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
      final View child = getChildAt(i);
      if (child.getVisibility() != GONE) {
        final int childLeft = getPaddingLeft();
        final int childTop = getPaddingTop();
        child.layout(childLeft, childTop,
            childLeft + child.getMeasuredWidth(),
            childTop + child.getMeasuredHeight());

      }
    }
  }
}

Answer 3

Put it into a WebView, it has to be able to display it correctly, since the default browser supports gif files. (Froyo+, if i am not mistaken)

Answer 4

I solved this by spliting gif in frames and use standard android animation

Answer 5

I had a really hard time to have animated gif working in Android. I only had following two working:

1. WebView
2. Ion

WebView works OK and really easy, but the problem is it makes the view loads slower and the app would be unresponsive for a second or so. I did not like that. So I have tried different approaches (DID NOT WORK):

1. ImageViewEx is deprecated!
2. picasso did not load animated gif
3. android-gif-drawable looks great, but it caused some wired NDK issues in my project. It caused my local NDK library stop working, and I was not able to fix it

I had some back and forth with Ion; Finally, I have it working, and it is really fast :-)

Ion.with(imgView)
  .error(R.drawable.default_image)
  .animateGif(AnimateGifMode.ANIMATE)
  .load("file:///android_asset/animated.gif");

Answer 6

I think the better library to handle gif files is this one: by koral

Used it and i'm successful and this library is dedicated to GIF'S; but where as the picasso and glide are general purpose image framework; so i think the developers of this library have entirely concentrated on gif files