Made an exe version of the python script that holds a preloaded data.json. Had a little trouble with getting pygame_gui to install into the exe but it worked in the end. If you run the exe you should see a data.json created inside the same directory as the exe, and that is so it can be updated with the latest images
Final update
The biggest issue in the earlier versions was the interface freezing whenever the app fetched new APi data or downloaded high-res images. To address this problem, i moved the network requests, cache updates, and image preloading onto the background threads using the threading module in python. Everything is much more smooth now.
I also added an input parser that lets the user to select a specific date, which the app will find and jump to the image with the closest date.
Furthermore, I added a download selector allowing users to save images in medium, large, or original quality via the native file save option.
I also added a buffer system that preloads the previous and next five neighbouring images into memory (also in the background!) making the image switching instant with no lag.
Can now view all of the James Webb space telescope images. Also optimized the manager to fetch just the first page to update the existing data file. If this file didnt exist at all, then a loading screen will display a little animation of stars while the first page loads, and upon it loading it lets the user view the images while the second page is loaded via background threading. Once all the pages have been downloaded, or it has been detected that the data already had that image, the process is stopped and the data is then saved. Also, once the user loads an image by clicking previous or next, that image is stored to avoid unnecesarily calling the same request again. Pretty exciting stuff
Got the app into a working state, can move forwards and backwards between images, super exciting. Extracted more info from the JSON to get the description, title, and date. UI is looking better, still a little bare. However, it is currently only possible to view the first page of images, so next devlogs will be focused on adding access to all the images, as well as improving their loading speeds. The core viewing mechanic is functional tho!
First time here, progress is being made. Didn’t know anything about APIs or jsons but here is the first succesful render. Biggest obstacle was figuring out how to request the image data and properly display it in pygame (of which I also knew very little about, which is why it is so barebones right now!) Foundation established, things are looking good.
