ASIHTTPRequest synchronous request crashing app - iphone

Question

I am currently working on an application I need to receive the data in order its very important so instead of going with asynchronous I am using synchronous. However this introduces a very unfortunate side effect, the synchronous request locks up the UI thread.
What I am doing to combat this issue is introduce Multithreading into my app with the use of the life saving "Grand Central Dispatch" services, which seems to be very easy to get my head around so far.
So with all this in mind I am having an issue with what I am doing, Previously I was using asynchronous and everything worked sweet, changing that to synchronous gives me this error
Error Domain=ASIHTTPRequestErrorDomain Code=1 "A connection failure occurred" UserInfo=0x68052a0 {NSUnderlyingError=0x683d250 "The operation couldn’t be completed. Connection refused", NSLocalizedDescription=A connection failure occurred}
Heres my code so far.
- (IBAction)setRequestString:(NSString *)string
{
//Set database address
NSMutableString *databaseURL = [[NSMutableString alloc] initWithString:#"http://192.168.1.1:8778/Data/"]; // iphone development
//PHP file name is being set from the parent view
[databaseURL appendString:string];
//call ASIHTTP delegates (Used to connect to database)
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:databaseURL];
//Used to Check which ASI cache to use (also used in requestFinished
xmlFileName = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:string];
//Set up multithread with GCD
dispatch_queue_t queue = dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_HIGH, 0ul);
//Create If statments here to set up the different caches to be passed down to the next view
if ([string isEqualToString:#"high.xml"]){
//Cache stuff goes in here
ASIHTTPRequest *request = [ASIHTTPRequest requestWithURL:url];
[request setDownloadCache:[ASIDownloadCache sharedCache]];
[request setCacheStoragePolicy:ASICachePermanentlyCacheStoragePolicy];
[request setCachePolicy:ASIOnlyLoadIfNotCachedCachePolicy];
[request setSecondsToCache:60*60*24*30]; // Cache for 30 days - this will change to cache until DBVersion changes
[request setDelegate:self]; // this calls the delegate function requestFinished
dispatch_sync(queue, ^ {
[request startSynchronous];
});
}else if ([string isEqualToString:#"low.xml"]){
//Cache stuff goes in here
ASIHTTPRequest *request = [ASIHTTPRequest requestWithURL:url];
[request setDownloadCache:[ASIDownloadCache sharedCache]];
[request setCacheStoragePolicy:ASICachePermanentlyCacheStoragePolicy];
[request setCachePolicy:ASIOnlyLoadIfNotCachedCachePolicy];
[request setSecondsToCache:60*60*24*30]; // Cache for 30 days - this will change to cache until DBVersion changes
[request setDelegate:self]; // this calls the delegate function requestFinished
dispatch_sync(queue, ^ {
[request startSynchronous];
});
}
}
- (void)requestFinished:(ASIHTTPRequest *)request
{
//.... etc
hopefully that gives you a better idea of what im trying to do, I think maybe I am missing something with the way I am declaring my syncronious start.. as in the asihttprequest help file they say to declare it like this
- (IBAction)grabURL:(id)sender
{
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:#"http://allseeing-i.com"];
ASIHTTPRequest *request = [ASIHTTPRequest requestWithURL:url];
[request startSynchronous];
NSError *error = [request error];
if (!error) {
NSString *response = [request responseString];
}
}
however Im working with data.. so this line
NSString *response = [request responseString];
will not work? dose it need to be NSData.. etc I dunno if someone could help me out that would be great.

Answer 1

You can use nsoperationqueue...
you can create one NSoperationInvoke and add those to NSoperationQueue in order(after reciving data sending another request)...You can add observer to NSOperationQueue to ensure that how many request will process at a time...in your case it will be just one...after receiving the notification in the observer that the synchronous process is completed it will call a selector by performonMainThread for starting another request in the observer itself...
on NSString *response = [request responseString];
issue you can check the request object by [request iskindofClass:[ClassName class]];
or nslog("%#",[request describe]);
it will tell what kind of object request is

Answer 2

Have you considered just adding a serial queue to your code?
dispatch_queue_t queue = dispatch_queue_create("com.myapp", NULL);
You are using a concurrent thread and it's causing multiple operations to occur at the same time. Also, wrap properly your ASIHttpRequest code within the queue blocks.
Give that a try and let us know