We have an app for browsing a catalog that streams content from a web server. There is an image for each product, some in JPG format and some in PNG format. Our server is fast and reliable so everything has been running smoothly so far, but we'd like to give users the option of saving the data to their device so they don't have to stream every time. I've only worked with SharedObjects before, which are capped at 100kb and won't be useful in this situation.
What would be the best approach for storing the images, and keeping them from being overwritten during updates? Saving an uncompressed Bitmap will use too much storage space. Adobe's JPEGEncoder class is completely useless as it takes 10-30 seconds to save a moderately-sized image on a typical device. It also doesn't make sense to re-encode the JPGs, and we need to preserve the transparency in the PNGs.
Right now we're using a Loader to retrieve the images and using loader.content to access the image data in code. Is it possible to save the image file in its original format locally when it is downloaded with a Loader? We would want the images stored in the application data and not accessible through the gallery. As for saving the data for each product (e.g. price, description, etc), would the built-in SQLite support be sufficient or should we create our own files?
Thanks for any tips!