how to reduce payload size in android web service call on android

Question

In my android application everything is based on web services with JSON requests and responses.

The user that is using their mobile data with a poor internet connection needs the application to work fast. So I want to reduce the amount of data sent between the phone and server.

How do I reduce the payload size? Is there any tool or library to improve the effective data transfer rate over a mobile connection?

Answer 1

There is no silver bullet in this situation, it's a pretty complex problem that differs from one app to another. Usually the main problem is the actual amount of data you transfer and there are no magic tools that solve that.

Here are a couple of general methods that help. If you haven't used any of them yet, they could have a great impact:

• Make sure all of your http requests are gzipped
• Make sure you don't send or receive any more data than you need at the very moment you need it. This might require splitting some of your requests to ensure you only get the data you need.
• Always request your data asynchronously

Answer 2

Generally, two approaches are used. I think you already know.

• Cache the data: use internal data storage. For RDB style approach, you can consider OrmLite or SqlLite.

• Compress http communication in gzip: read this article to apply to the app.