Memory leak when creating bitmaps in a loop

I have an map app. Somewhere in my code I am rendering data from database into canvas. I ran into "out of memory" exception and I cant figure out how to avoid it.

Here is the relevant method. I get exception when creating bitmap with bitmapfactory.

private static void _renderImage(Canvas g, Point[] points, RImageData imageData, 
                                 RMapView mapView) {

    Bitmap image = (Bitmap)imageData.image;
    Paint paint = new Paint();
    if(image == null) {
        image = BitmapFactory.decodeByteArray(imageData.getImageBytes(), 0,
                                              imageData.getImageBytes().length);
        imageData.image = image;
    }
    g.drawBitmap(image, points[开发者_StackOverflow社区0].x, points[0].y, paint);
}

I have tried recycling the image, but then the canvas coplains it cant work with recycled bitmaps.

Any solution would be much apreciated.

I would suggest having a bitmap cache. Even recycling images on pre-honeycomb takes time to free memory (Bitmap data is stored in native memory that is not directly managed by dalvik). Here is a sample of a bitmap cache. Please adjust it to your needs.

/**
 * @author audrius Bitmap cache
 */
private static class BitmapCache {
    //private static final String TAG = "BitmapCache";
    private final int mCacheSize;
    private final String mBitmapLocation;
    private LinkedHashMap<String, Bitmap> mBitmapCache;

    /**
     * Constructor
     * 
     * @param cacheSize
     *            Cache size in element count (e.g. 8 = at most 8 Bitmaps in
     *            cache)
     * @param bitmapLocation
     *            Physical root path to bitmap location
     */
    public BitmapCache(int cacheSize, String bitmapLocation) {
        mCacheSize = cacheSize;
        mBitmapLocation = bitmapLocation;

        mBitmapCache = new LinkedHashMap<String, Bitmap>(mCacheSize + 1) {
            private static final long serialVersionUID = -4156123801558395154L;

            @Override
            protected boolean removeEldestEntry(
                    java.util.Map.Entry<String, Bitmap> eldest) {
                return size() > mCacheSize;
            };

            @Override
            public Bitmap remove(Object key) {
                Bitmap bmp = super.get(key);
                // make sure to release resources as soon as possible
                bmp.recycle();
                return super.remove(key);
            }
        };
    }

    /**
     * Returns Bitmap (either from cache or physical location)
     * 
     * @param bitmapFilename
     * @return
     */
    public Bitmap getBitmap(String bitmapFilename) {
        Bitmap ret = mBitmapCache.get(bitmapFilename);
        //Log.v(TAG, "getBitmap : " + bitmapFilename);
        if (ret == null) {
            //Log.v(TAG, "Bitmap not cached, reading location : " + mBitmapLocation);
            ret = BitmapFactory.decodeFile(new File(mBitmapLocation, bitmapFilename).getAbsolutePath());
            mBitmapCache.put(bitmapFilename, ret);
        }

        return ret;
    }

    /**
     * Clears bitmap cache
     */
    public void clear() {
        if (mBitmapCache != null) {
            for (Bitmap bitmap : mBitmapCache.values()) {
                if (bitmap != null) bitmap.recycle();
            }

            mBitmapCache.clear();
        }
    }
}

I have tried recycling the image, but then the canvas coplains it cant work with recycled bitmaps.

I think that the idea is that you are supposed to "recycle" the bitmap and then drop it on the floor for the garbage collector to deal with.

Here's what the javadoc says about recycle():

"Free the native object associated with this bitmap, and clear the reference to the pixel data. This will not free the pixel data synchronously; it simply allows it to be garbage collected if there are no other references. The bitmap is marked as "dead", meaning it will throw an exception if getPixels() or setPixels() is called, and will draw nothing. This operation cannot be reversed, so it should only be called if you are sure there are no further uses for the bitmap. This is an advanced call, and normally need not be called, since the normal GC process will free up this memory when there are no more references to this bitmap.".