Firebase Cloud Storage Android - Retrieving images with no cost

0
votes

I am really confused about the process of retrieving and displaying images to your android app from firebase cloud storage. I looked around the web, but am unable to get a definitive answer to my questions.

With regards to my app, I simply want a place to store a bunch of images (around 2500) that I can display. I don't use authentication and I don't mind making these images public.

  1. Do I have to request a download URL every time I want to retrieve an image from storage? I am worried because Firebase Storage allows you to download 1GB/day and only 50k/day download operations for free, which is not a lot of download operations for 2500 images.

  2. Is there a way for me to access and display images without having to call reference.getDownloadUrl() ** every time I display an image?** Maybe some sort of workaround by making the images public and then storing the cloud storage URLs in a Room Database?

Any help is appreciated.

2
androidfirebasefirebase-storage

2 Answers

1
votes

Do I have to request a download URL every time I want to retrieve an image from storage?

No, you can use the same URL repeatedly. Store that URL anywhere you like. But you will always pay the cost for egress every time the URL is accessed. There are no free downloads after the free allowance.

Is there a way for me to access and display images without having to call reference.getDownloadUrl() every time I display an image?

No, as I said above, you can reuse the same URL if you want. You can also configre the entire cloud storage bucket as public and simply build URLs to object as described in the links here. But again, downloads will be billed according to the normal Cloud Storage rates.

0
votes

Please enable Firebase Storage for your bucket by visiting the Storage tab in the Firebase Console and ensure that you have sufficient permission to properly provision resources.", "status": "ACCESS_BUCKET"