Beeware App Optimization – Making Faster Apps

In this article, we will walk you through the process of Beeware app optimization to make your application run faster, more efficient, and more user-friendly.

Are you looking to optimize your Beeware applications for better performance and user experience? Beeware provides a wide range of tools and techniques to optimize your applications.

Why Beeware App Optimization?

If you don’t have a high-speed internet connection, you might observe that clicking the button causes the graphical user interface (GUI) of your application to freeze for a brief period.

This occurs because the web request we initiate is synchronous, which means that when the application sends the request, it waits for the API to provide a response before proceeding.

During this waiting period, the application doesn’t refresh, causing it to become unresponsive.

Profile Your Beeware Applications

The first step in optimization is to identify the areas of your Beeware application that require improvement.

Profiling is the process of analyzing your application’s performance and identifying the bottlenecks that are slowing it down.

Use profiling tools such as cProfile or PyCharm’s built-in profiler to analyze your application’s code and identify the areas that need optimization.

Improve Code Efficiency

Once you have identified the bottleneck areas, optimize your application’s code for efficiency.

Use optimized data structures, minimize redundant code, and avoid using heavy libraries or frameworks that can slow down your application.

Use generators instead of lists, use caching to reduce database queries, and use built-in Python functions and modules to improve performance.

GUI Event Loops

If you want to comprehend why this occurs, you need to delve into the intricacies of how a GUI application operates.

Although the specifics may differ depending on the platform you’re using, the fundamental concepts remain constant across all platforms and GUI environments.

At its core, a GUI app is a singular loop that resembles something along the lines of:

while not app.quit_requested():

    app.process_events()

    app.redraw()

When you interact with a GUI app by clicking a button, dragging a scroll bar, or typing a key, you’re essentially generating an “event” that’s placed in a queue to be processed by the app’s Event Loop. These events trigger user code, known as event handlers, which are executed during the process_events() call.

Once all available events have been processed, the app redraws the GUI to reflect any changes that the events have caused, as well as other system activities, such as window switching.

It’s crucial to note that while an app is processing an event, it cannot redraw or process other events. Therefore, user logic in an event handler must be executed quickly to avoid causing a delay that can result in a slowdown or even a complete stop in GUI updates. Operating systems often use icons, such as the macOS “beachball” or the Windows “spinner,” to alert users of app delays caused by prolonged event handling.

While simple operations like updating a label or recomputing the total of inputs can be executed quickly, complex operations such as mathematical calculations, file indexing, or large network requests inherently take longer to complete.

How can we execute operations that take a long time to complete in a GUI application?

Beeware Asynchronous Programming

To make your app responsive even when executing long-lived event handlers, you need to find a way to temporarily release control back to the event loop, as long as you can pick up where you left off. The app is responsible for determining when it can release control, but regular releases to the event loop can keep your UI responsive. One way to achieve this is through asynchronous programming, which allows the interpreter to run multiple functions at the same time and share resources between them. Asynchronous functions, also called co-routines, must be explicitly declared as asynchronous and should indicate when an opportunity exists to switch context to another co-routine. In Python, you can use the async and await keywords, as well as the asyncio module in the standard library, to implement asynchronous programming and take advantage of useful tools and primitives.

Making Program Asynchronous

To turn your program into an asynchronous one, you need to change the output() event handler to this:

async def output(self, widget):

    async with httpx.AsyncClient() as client:

        response = await client.get("https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/42")

    payload = response.json()

    self.main_window.info_dialog(

        greeting(self.name_input.value),

        payload["body"],

    )

You can make your program asynchronous by making four changes in the code compared to the previous version.

• Firstly, you need to define the method as async def, which will indicate to Python that the method is an asynchronous co-routine.
• Secondly, you have to create an asynchronous AsyncClient() instead of a synchronous Client() to let httpx operate in asynchronous mode.
• Thirdly, mark the context manager used to create the client as async, which tells Python that there is an opportunity to release control as the context manager is entered and exited.
• Finally, you need to use an await keyword with the get call, which instructs the app that while waiting for the response from the network, the app can release control to the event loop.

With Toga, you can use regular methods or asynchronous co-routines as handlers. Toga takes care of everything behind the scenes to ensure that the handler is invoked or awaited as required.

After saving these changes and re-running the app, there will not be any obvious changes to the app. However, when you click on the button to trigger the dialog, you may notice subtle improvements, such as the button returning to an “unclicked” state instead of being stuck in a “clicked” state, the “beachball“/”spinner” icon not appearing, the window redrawing when moved or resized while waiting for the dialog to appear, and the app menu appearing immediately when opened.

Optimize Memory Usage

Memory management is crucial for application performance, especially for mobile devices with limited memory.

Optimize your Beeware application’s memory usage by reducing unnecessary object creation, avoiding circular references, and using context managers to ensure proper object cleanup.

Use Python’s garbage collector to free up memory, and avoid using mutable objects as class attributes.

Implement Caching and Threading

Caching and threading can significantly improve your Beeware application’s performance.

Use caching to store frequently accessed data in memory, reducing the need for database queries or expensive calculations.

Implement threading to perform long-running tasks in the background, freeing up the main thread to handle user interactions.

Optimize User Interface

Optimizing your Beeware application’s user interface can improve user experience and engagement.

Use appropriate layout and design principles, minimize unnecessary animations or transitions, and optimize images and graphics for faster loading times.

Use lazy loading to defer loading of non-critical components until they are needed, reducing initial loading times.

Test and Refine

After implementing optimization techniques, test your Beeware application thoroughly to ensure that it’s working as expected.

Test on different platforms and devices to ensure compatibility and performance.

Refine and tweak optimization techniques as needed to achieve the best performance and user experience.

Beeware App Optimization Importance

By using asynchronous programming techniques, Beeware applications can perform multiple tasks concurrently, without waiting for each task to complete before moving on to the next one. This can result in improved performance and faster execution times.

Asynchronous programming can also improve the responsiveness of Beeware applications by allowing them to continue processing user input and other events while performing other tasks in the background.

Asynchronous programming can make Beeware applications more scalable, as it allows them to handle multiple requests or events simultaneously, without blocking or delaying other operations.

By using asynchronous programming, Beeware applications can consume fewer resources, as they can perform multiple tasks with a smaller number of threads or processes.

Conclusion

Beeware is a collection of tools and libraries that enable the development of native applications using Python. Asynchronous programming is an important concept in Beeware, as it allows developers to write code that can perform multiple tasks concurrently, leading to better performance, responsiveness, and scalability in their applications. By using asynchronous programming techniques, Beeware applications can improve their performance, responsiveness, and resource consumption, making them more efficient and effective. Overall, Beeware and asynchronous programming can provide a powerful platform for developing high-quality, native applications in Python.