Custom picture(s) selector which indicates what pictures have been uploaded already

[nicolas-raoul]

Users can upload images from the app by tapping the "+" button of the main activity and tapping the "gallery" button which calls Android's built-in picture selector.
This issue would introduce a custom picture selector, which shows whether each picture has been uploaded to Commons already or not.
This is useful because after a long trip it is difficult to remember what pictures you have uploaded already.

The custom selector would show a gallery of thumbnails where already uploaded pictures are faded out and have a Commons logo overlay.

Sketch UI

New button to select the custom picture selector:

Custom selector:

In the example above, you can see that I have already uploaded the 4 pictures on the right, but not the two pictures on the left. Seeing this, I can decide whether I want to upload the first picture or not, given I have arguably already uploaded a better picture (with less cars).

Requirements

• Show thumbnails.
• Let the user switch to another folder.
• Scrolling must be smooth, so that I can skip 100 pictures without waiting much
• Show differently images that have been uploaded already.
• To check whether a picture has been uploaded already or not, use the API (see below), as pictures may have been uploaded via a different device, or the user may have uninstalled/reinstalled the app.
• Results from the API must be cached, so that when I open the picture selector again the same API requests are not called again.
• API calls must not prevent scrolling (asynchronous).

Bonus

Would be nice, but not strictly required:

• Long-press to preview the image fullscreen.
• Also show a "GPS" overlay icon for pictures that do not have EXIF latitude/longitude.

Strategies

• You could reuse an open source gallery like https://github.com/nostra13/Android-Universal-Image-Loader which is reused by many applications, but please make sure that:
  • The library's license is compatible with our app's license.
  • Our app's APK size does not grow by more than 1 MB (in other words, the library is not too big).
  • The library is either maintained, or has less than 10.000 lines of code, reasonably well-written.
  • It allows the customization described above.
• Or you could implement a simple picture selector from scratch (it might be the only solution if no suitable library is found).

API

Commons has a simple API to check the presence or not of a file, it works by sending the SHA1 checksum to the URL https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allimages&format=xml&aisha1=<put SHA1 here>. Examples:

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allimages&format=xml&aisha1=579330b110c605f7984f7ef6161e3ef8a417ef96 : We see that this image has been already uploaded.
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allimages&format=xml&aisha1=da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709 : We see that this image has not yet been uploaded.

The API is quite slow (around 1 second per request), which is why caching and asynchronous loading is needed. The selector must be usable even if Internet is extremely slow or disconnected.

[nicolas-raoul]

If we implement this, we could as well also show what pictures have GPS coordinates.
Pictures with coordinates are worth much more in the Commons world.

[nicolas-raoul]

I created a similar tool for Linux: https://github.com/nicolas-raoul/nautilus_commons_upload_status
It is only a proof-of-concept prototype, it lacks caching, but it works. The interesting part: https://github.com/nicolas-raoul/nautilus_commons_upload_status/blob/master/nautilus-commons-upload-status.py#L65

[nicolas-raoul]

Incidentally #2278 might make this easier to implement :-) Probably by creating a custom ImageLoader that inherits from the default ImageLoader and adds overlays for Commons presence and EXIF geolocation presence.

(2021 update: we are actually not using the code from #2278 anymore)

[srish]

Hi! I just saw an Android app project listed here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/2021#Add_a_custom_picture_selector_to_the_Commons_Android_app that I couldn't identify who added. @nicolas-raoul @madhurgupta10 Could you confirm if you plan to mentor this project in the upcoming round of GSoC? If so, could you also add it to Phabricator?

[HamzaBinMubeen]

Hi Sir Nicolas,
I am Hamza Bin Mubeen, currently doing Alevel's and I plan to contribute to this project as I have basic knowledge of Android app development. I am going to start learning Java in May from Coursera, so this project and your mentorship could help me get practically involved while learning through courses.
I would be glad too, by contributing to one of the biggest open-source projects.
Other than that I have been learning Web Development since 2016 and Programming (Python, C#) since 2017.

Can you guide me with some basic tasks that I should start with?

Waiting for your reply.

Thankyou,
Hamza

[HamzaBinMubeen]

Also @nicolas-raoul I read the reviews of the commons app, and most of the people are facing a common issue of not being able to zoom in a picture, watching a video, and are having constant crashes. Can we create a project for GSoC and fix these issues too?
Also I think we should add an optimization feature which decreases the image quality for slower network connections.
Let me know how can we proceed in this.

Thank you.

[nicolas-raoul]

@srish Thanks for the nudge! We will add a Phabricator issue.

[madhurgupta10]

Hi! I just saw an Android app project listed here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/2021#Add_a_custom_picture_selector_to_the_Commons_Android_app that I couldn't identify who added. @nicolas-raoul @madhurgupta10 Could you confirm if you plan to mentor this project in the upcoming round of GSoC? If so, could you also add it to Phabricator?

@srish Yes, we are mentoring :)

[nicolas-raoul]

@srish I created a Phabricator task: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T278015

[HamzaBinMubeen]

Hi Sir Nicolas,
I am Hamza Bin Mubeen, currently doing Alevel's and I plan to contribute to this project as I have basic knowledge of Android app development. I am going to start learning Java in May from Coursera, so this project and your mentorship could help me get practically involved while learning through courses.
I would be glad too, by contributing to one of the biggest open-source projects.
Other than that I have been learning Web Development since 2016 and Programming (Python, C#) since 2017.

Can you guide me with some basic tasks that I should start with?

Waiting for your reply.

Thankyou,
Hamza

Also @nicolas-raoul I read the reviews of the commons app, and most of the people are facing a common issue of not being able to zoom in a picture, watching a video, and are having constant crashes. Can we create a project for GSoC and fix these issues too?
Also I think we should add an optimization feature which decreases the image quality for slower network connections.
Let me know how can we proceed in this.

Thank you.

Please help me out. Waiting for a reply😊