Memory leaks with custom font for set custom font

Question

The following code for setting custom fonts slows down my whole app. how do i modify it to avoid memory leaks and increase the speed and manage memory well?

public class FontTextView extends TextView {
    private static final String TAG = "FontTextView";

    public FontTextView(Context context) {
        super(context);
    }

    public FontTextView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
        super(context, attrs);
        setCustomFont(context, attrs);
    }

    public FontTextView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle) {
        super(context, attrs, defStyle);
        setCustomFont(context, attrs);
    }

    private void setCustomFont(Context ctx, AttributeSet attrs) {
        TypedArray a = ctx.obtainStyledAttributes(attrs, R.styleable.FontTextView);
        String customFont = a.getString(R.styleable.FontTextView_customFont);
        setCustomFont(ctx, customFont);
        a.recycle();
    }

    public boolean setCustomFont(Context ctx, String asset) {
        Typeface tf = null;
        try {
        tf = Typeface.createFromAsset(ctx.getAssets(),"fonts/"+ asset);  
        } catch (Exception e) {
            Log.e(TAG, "Could not get typeface: "+e.getMessage());
            return false;
        }

        setTypeface(tf);  
        return true;
    }
    }

Answer 1

I feel using the Font cache is not needed.Can we do this way?

A minor change to the above code, Correct me if i am wrong.

public class FontTextView extends TextView {
    private static final String TAG = "FontTextView";
    private static Typeface mTypeface;

    public FontTextView(Context context) {
        super(context);
    }

    public FontTextView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
        super(context, attrs);
    }

    public FontTextView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle) {
        super(context, attrs, defStyle);
        if (mTypeface == null) {
            mTypeface = Typeface.createFromAsset(context.getAssets(),   GlobalConstants.SECONDARY_TTF);
        }
        setTypeface(mTypeface);
    }

    }

Answer 2

You should cache the TypeFace, otherwise you might risk memory leaks on older handsets. Caching will increase speed as well since it's not super fast to read from assets all the time.

public class FontCache {

    private static Hashtable<String, Typeface> fontCache = new Hashtable<String, Typeface>();

    public static Typeface get(String name, Context context) {
        Typeface tf = fontCache.get(name);
        if(tf == null) {
            try {
                tf = Typeface.createFromAsset(context.getAssets(), name);
            }
            catch (Exception e) {
                return null;
            }
            fontCache.put(name, tf);
        }
        return tf;
    }
}

I gave a full example on how to load custom fonts and style textviews as an answer to a similar question. You seem to be doing most of it right, but you should cache the font as recommended above.