App crash because of auto lock in iphone? - iphone

My app is crashing because of the auto-lock setting time is 2 min and my web-serevice is taking time more than 2 min.
if time goes over 2 min then my app crashed every time.
but i don't want to set the auto-lock time to 15 min or never from setting.
I want some solution within the app without changing the setting value.
please let me know if any one know the solution to avoid the crash.
Thanks you.

You can turn off auto-lock temporarily until the request is completed, that is set [UIApplication sharedApplication].idleTimerDisabled to YES.
The other option is to set your web service request up as a finite-length task running in background, so even if your device goes to sleep, the request keeps running. Watch out for the 10-minute time limit though.
Either way, when running in foreground, make sure the request is done asynchronously and doesn't block the main thread or your app will always get killed after doing that for too long.

How about detecting when your app goes into background / inactive
- (void)applicationWillResignActive:(UIApplication *)application
and use the task completion mechanism - take a look at this question: How to implement Task completion
As a side note, there is a 10 minutes limit to complete the background task (you get a warning) - otherwise your app will get terminated.
Did you consider splitting the data into smaller chunks and keep track of the progress?

Related

How can I prevent my timer app from being terminated by iOS

I have a timer app, it counts up for an indefinite amount of time (until the user stops the timer). It works much like the default iOS clock stopwatch.
I have read the articles about being a responsible background app. I don't have any UI changes happening and stop the timer when the app goes in the background and resume the timer upon returning to foreground. The app does send a local notification every 30 minutes or so to remind the user to take a break.
Problem: Without fail my app is terminated after a few hours (between 2-6 or so hours) and the current timer and info is lost.
Things I've tried:
-As aforementioned I changed my app to follow the guidelines of being a responsible background app (before I had the timer UI counting up and also the timer running, even while in background). I thought this would solve the problem since my app isn't using up much memory or doing any intensive tasks.
-I also have tried saving out the data of the current timer (to NSUserDefaults) in ApplicationWillTerminate and then restore it on DidFinishLaunchingWithOptions. It doesn't seem to work. It's almost like my app is force quit or something because if ApplicationWillTerminate was being called then it would save the data and restore it upon the app launching again. Mystery.
-Currently I'm saving an NSDate of the start time of the NSTimer on ApplicationDidEnterBackground, invalidating the timer, and starting the timer and restoring the start time upon ApplicationWillEnterForeground. Still no luck.
The thing is this is affecting a very small percentage of my users--so it's not like it's a problem for everyone, which makes it more confusing. I still want to fix it of course because it's a pretty lame bug--and I've encountered it myself (on an iPhone 5), so it's not necessarily an old iPhone low memory somethingorother problem.
This has really boggled me, I've done my research and also scoured fairly well the stack overflow questions and don't seem to find much of anything to help me.
Any help would be appreciated, feel free to ask more questions or tell me to clarify.
applicationWillTerminate is basically never called. It will not be called when your app is in the background and it gets removed from memory. You should expect your app to be removed from memory if it hasn't been used for a while. How long "a while" is depends on what else the device is doing at the time... Best to use applicationDidEnterBackground: or applicationWillResignActive:.
When your app goes into the background, record your timer's elapsed time (eg: in NSUserDefaults or however you prefer). Also record the current time. When the app comes back into the foreground, look at the two values you recorded and update the elapsed time accordingly, ie:
elapsedTime = savedElapsedTime + (currentTime - timeWentIntoBackground)
There's really no reason your app needs to remain active in the background burning the user's battery just to keep track of seconds ticking by.
Also, don't rely on applicationWillTerminate. Use applicationWillEnterBackground.

iOS applicationWillEnterForeground not called and black screen while background task is running

I'm using a background task to complete a few operations when the user suspends my app.
This works fine, but I just noticed that if the user reactivates the app before the background task is finished the screen stays black and applicationWillEnterForeground: is never called.
Once the background task is done all is fine again and applicationWillEnterForeground is called, but is there a way to make the app reactivate while the task is running?
All I could find is to have the background task constantly check the remaining time and notice that this becomes very high when the app is reactivated. It can then end itself and the app appears, but this still means the app is black for half a second or so.
Quick question. Are you using beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler?
And are you running the actual work asynchronously? As shown in this answer?
objective c - Proper use of beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler
If not, you should run your long running work on a-sychornously because else it will be executed as part of your main RunLoop. Which will indeed block your apps redraws and responsiveness until the long running task is completed.

controlling when app will refresh when returning from background

This is a rather general question on what actually happens when an app returns from background. I have a user telling me that on opening my app that he has not used for over a day, he will still be shown the same view that he had before he closed the app (by "closed" I mean he just hit the home button to send it to background, NOT hold and then tap the cross button to kill the app completely).
I was on the impression that if an app is restored from the background after a long time, it will be reloaded completely (showing splash screen and everything), as in the cases when I opened facebook or gmail app after I haven't used it for some time.
So my question is, do I have to implement a check somewhere on the period of time passed since my app was sent to background and reset everything when it goes over a certain threshold, or is that supposed to be handled by iOS itself... and of course if a user sent my app to the background and return after 2 minutes I would not want to refresh
You might have to handle that in your appdelegate methods by setting a timestamp. Since multitasking is enabled in iPhones, it will start from the same screen again. An app can be in background for a long time until user decides to kill the app.
Some of the delegate methods are
- (void)applicationWillResignActive:(UIApplication *)iApplication;
- (void)applicationDidEnterBackground:(UIApplication *)iApplication;
- (void)applicationWillEnterForeground:(UIApplication *)iApplication;
- (void)applicationDidBecomeActive:(UIApplication *)iApplication;
If you want to disable multitasking you can do that by setting a UIApplicationExistsOnSuspend key in application plist. But that will make the app quit immediately when user presses home button.
The decision on whether your app should refresh after some period of time in the background is completely up to you and the needs of your app. An app could sit in the background for weeks without being killed by the OS. Or it could be killed seconds after going into the background. It all depends on resources being needed for other running apps.
If you want logic in your app that makes it restart after 24 hours, for example, then it is up to you to write code to handle this. Save a timestamp when the app goes into the background. When it returns to the foreground, compare the current time to the saved timestamp. If enough time has passed, you need to update your UI to reflect whatever desired state you want to show the user.

Terminate xcode app due to time out

I have an app in Xcode which handles sensitive data. I would like to terminate the app / exit forcefully if there is inactivity for 5 mins. Can someone please tell me how to do this?
Thank you!
Click here for a tutorial on how to make a timer. Every action that the user takes, reset the timer. When the 5 minutes are up, you can use exit(0).
However, this method of programatically closing your app is discouraged by Apple, so use it at your own discretion.
Edit: In order to stop the timer, you need to store a pointer to the timer that you create, and then call:
[pointerToTimer invalidate];
pointerToTimer = nil;
Edit 2: An alternative to using exit(0) would be to make a almost blank screen except for some text that states:
You have been inactive for too long. Please exit and restart this application.
Make this screen appear once the timer gets to 5 minutes. Therefore, the user can't do anything on the app but look at the screen, or exit the app.
If you're writing an app to submit to the app store, you can't (according to the guidelines). See details in this note: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/ipad/#qa/qa1561/_index.html
If you don't care about the store or interface guidelines, it suggests that exit() is available.

Running code in a timer while application is in the background

Is it possible for this situation to happen:
My application enters the background, I want a NSTimer to run in the
- (void)applicationDidEnterBackground:(UIApplication *)application
method, every two or so seconds. I know how to initiate the timer, however what I want to know is if I can run code every 2 seconds or whatever I choose in the background? Or is it once the application has entered the background code cannot be run. I know with android if applications are left open but minimised you can run code as they continue to run in the background.
You've doubted it correct. The application that enters background can not run. So, you can not execute your code while the app in background. I'd suggest you to go through the Apple's doc Executing Code in the Background. It begins with,
"Most applications that enter the background state are moved to the suspended state shortly thereafter. While in this state, the application does not execute any code and may be removed from memory at any time."
But the services audio, location and voip are allowed to run in background. For those services the background execution must be declared in advance by the application that uses them.
If you move your application to background and declare the application as audio it will run.