Use image info instead of event logs for getting user uploads

[maskaravivek]

Summary:

Currently, the app fetches the user's contributions by:

• Step 1: querying logevents API (ApacheHttpClientMediaWikiApi:logEvents). This gives the pageid, filename and dateUpdated for user's uploads

• Step 2: Deleted files(the ones with pageid 0) are skipped and the rest is inserted int the contributions db.

• Step 3: To show the list of contributions, findThumbnailByFilename is called for each file and the image along with filename is shown.

I propose that we move away from this approach and start consuming imageinfo API for displaying user's contributions.

Eg:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&formatversion=2&generator=allimages&gaisort=timestamp&prop=imageinfo&iiprop=url%7Cextmetadata&iiurlwidth=640&iiextmetadatafilter=DateTime%7CCategories%7CGPSLatitude%7CGPSLongitude%7CImageDescription%7CDateTimeOriginal%7CArtist%7CLicenseShortName%7CLicenseUrl&gaiuser=Maskaravivek&gailimit=10

Pros:

• all meta info(categories, url, thumbnail, author etc) related to the image can be retrieved in a single call.
• paginated response(similar to the log events API)
• Step 2, Step 3 won't be required
• In all probability, we can remove the limitation of showing just 500 images in the app. (Allow dynamic loading of contributions, without number limit #1993)
• The behavior will become similar to the category list and search list
• Will make Show caption instead of filename (in my contributions and Explore) #2525 pretty straightforward to implement
• Will fix Contributions: Same 3 images repeat forever #2892 (Note: There are other ways to fix this. The fix is not entirely dependent)
• Will pave way for Adding a search fragment to search other users by name #2739, as the same fragment can be reused just by replacing the user's name.
• Move closer to Code quality: make contributions and featured activity use same code #1566.

Cons:

• If we want to show deleted images then we will need a way to fetch them. Discussion App displays images which have been deleted #118.
• Still won't address Cache contribution images #2496. We can think of a common caching strategy for images displayed in explore, search and contributions. Obviously, we would be more aggressive in caching contributions.

[maskaravivek]

Most of the code in ContributionsSyncAdapter is from 2013. Fixing the above would help us with #1092

@misaochan @nicolas-raoul it would be great if you could give your opinions on this issue.

[misaochan]

@maskaravivek This sounds good to me. The old method is a relic from the legacy app that was implemented before category suggestions etc. I really like the idea of switching to using the same API as that used to generate category suggestions and search - maybe we could even reuse some of the common code if feasible?

Not being able to retrieve deleted images may indeed be a disadvantage, but I don't think we ever reached a consensus on whether we even want that, to begin with.

Pinging @whym and @dbrant for input too.

[maskaravivek]

@ashishkumar468 After our latest refactoring are we still using logEvents to fetch the contributions or has it changed?

[ashishkumar468]

@maskaravivek We are still using logEvents.