I had the UIActivityIndicatorView working fine in simulator and other 3.0 devices in my app. But I found out that it was not spinning (or showing) in the new iphone 4. Basically I need to show the activity indicator when a button is clicked and hide it when the button click event is complete. I was using the approach below.
[NSThread detachNewThreadSelector: #selector(spinBegin) toTarget:self withObject:nil];
from this link. As mentioned, it correctly spins the activity indicator on all except 4.*.. not sure why. To get around this, I also followed another approach something like (from developer.apple.com)
`
(IBAction)syncOnThreadAction:(id)sender
{
[self willStartJob];
[self performSelectorInBackground:
#selector(inThreadStartDoJob:)
withObject:theJobToDo
];
}
(void)inThreadStartDoJob:(id)theJobToDo
{
NSAutoreleasePool * pool;
NSString * status;
pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
assert(pool != nil);
status = [... do long running job specified by theJobToDo ...]
[self performSelectorOnMainThread:
#selector(didStopJobWithStatus:)
withObject:status
waitUntilDone:NO
];
[pool drain];
}
`
The problem with this was that, it is showing the acitivityVIewIndicator spinning correctly (at least on the simulator) but after it stops, the built in activity indicator in the top bar (where it shows the battery% etc) is still spinning.
I'm new to objective C. I have finished my app completely but for this silly thing. I realize there is no way to display UIActivityView without starting another thread. and finally, just to rant, I don't understand why they have to make it so complicated. I mean they knew it was going to have this problem, why not provide a sample code everyone can use rather than deriving their own solutions.
Finally, can anyone please provide me with a direction or some sample code. I would really appreciate it. I have been searching for a few hours now and have not found anything really that works!
Why are you starting/stopping the indicator on a separate thread? Any methods you send to your UIActivityIndicatorView must be sent on the main (UI) thread.
Any events sent by a button pressed will automatically be run on the main thread. If you're using background threads to complete the process, you could do something like:
- (IBAction)buttonPressed:(id)sender {
// This runs on the main thread
[activityIndicator startAnimating];
[self performSelectorInBackground:#selector(inThreadStartDoJob:) withObject:theJobToDo];
}
- (void)inThreadStartDoJob:(id)theJobToDo {
// Set up autorelease pool
...
// Run your long-running action
...
// Stop the spinner. Since we're in a background thread,
// we need to push this to the UI Thread
[activityIndicator performSelectorOnMainThread:#selector(stopAnimating) withObject:nil waitUntilDone:YES];
}
Edit: As for the activity indicator in the top bar (where the battery is), doesn't this automatically start/stop based on network activity?
Related
I've been researching this for a few days, but nothing I've found works.
Here's the desired process: User presses the enter button on a pop-up window -> ActivityIdicator appears -> saving process occurs -> ActivityIndicator disappears.
However, for some reason the ActivityIndicator does not show up until after the process is complete, rendering it completely useless.
I attempted to follow the process described here: UIActivityIndicator not working properly?
Here is the code for the pop-up window
-(void)alertView:(UIAlertView *)actionSheet clickedButtonAtIndex:(NSInteger)buttonIndex {
// the user clicked one of the Enter/Cancel buttons
[self performSelector:#selector(DisplaySpinner) withObject:nil afterDelay:0];
if (buttonIndex == 1)
{
[self performSelector:#selector(EnterButtonClicked) withObject:nil afterDelay:0];
}
else
{
NSLog(#"Name Cancel Clicked");
}
[NameField resignFirstResponder];
}
Here is the code for the DisplaySpinner method:
-(void)DisplaySpinner{
NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc]init];
[self.view addSubview:loadingIndicator];
[loadingIndicator startAnimating];
[pool release];
}
The EnterButtonClicked Method contains the saving process. Despite running in seperate processes, The ActivityIndicator doesn't show up until after the process is complete.
Any suggestions?
The app doesn't update the screen to show the UIActivityIndicatorView until the main run loop regains control. If your processing task blocks the main thread, the no UI updates will take place until it is finished. You should do your processing asynchronously.
When a rotation event happens, the willRotate... and willAnimateRotation... methods are called in one pass through the main run loop. So you block on the method before displaying the activity indicator.
To make this work, you need to push the method task over to another thread. That method would call back to this view controller when the work is completed so the view can be updated. I would put show the activity indicator in the willAnimateRotation... method.
What you need to do is forcing the UIActivityIndicatorView to start displaying even though the run loop won't be ended. One way is -
[self performSelector:#selector(animation) withObject:nil afterDelay:0]
-(void)startSpinner
{
NSAutoreleasepool *pool = [[NSAutorepleasepool alloc]init];
[indicatorView startAnimating];
[pool release];
}
So essentially, performSelector sets up a timer to perform the animation message on the current thread’s run loop. The timer is configured to run in the default mode (NSDefaultRunLoopMode). When the timer fires, the thread attempts to dequeue the message from the run loop and perform the selector. It succeeds if the run loop is running and in the default mode; otherwise, the timer waits until the run loop is in the default mode.
Please note that specifying a delay of 0 does not necessarily cause the selector to be performed immediately. The selector is still queued on the thread’s run loop and performed as soon as possible.
I feel as though there is a really simple solution to my problem, but thus far I have had little success... I want to load my initial .xib file (exiting the default.png splash screen early), so that I may display an activity indicator while loading my html data and setting the text label fields created by my xib file.
Unfortunately, when I execute the following code below, I display my default.png image until all of the data is loaded from each website... What may I change in order to first display my mainView, then start the activity indicator, load my html data, and set the text labels in my mainView?
#implementation MainViewController
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
[activityIndicator startAnimating];
[self runTimer];
}
- (void)viewDidAppearBOOL)animated {
[super viewDidAppear:animated];
[self loadHTMLData1];
[self loadHTMLData2];
[self loadHTMLData3];
[self loadHTMLData4];
[activityIndicator stopAnimating];
}
...
It's all to do with how iOS updates the ui. When you call
[activityIndicator startAnimating];
it doesn't mean start animating immediately, it means you're telling the ui the next time you are updating the display, start animating.
All of this updating happens on the main thread (if you haven't made a thread, you're already on the main thread) so if you do something else that takes a long time, it will do this before updating the display.
There are a few ways to fix this and they all involve making another thread that runs in the background.
Take a look at NSOperation (and NSOperationQueue) - this will let you queue up individual tasks that iOS will run in the background for you. then when they are complete you can update your display again and turn off your activity indicator.
There's NSOperationQueue tutorials all over google :)
Hope that helps.
Basically, i have a method that takes a few seconds to complete as it copies some files using NSFileManager. This is invoked on the touchesMoved event when the user picks up a draggable UIView icon. However, there's a slight delay before the icon's position is updated. I'm guessing it's waiting for that method to copy it's files before continuing. The method HAS to be triggered on touchesMoved, so please don't suggest moving it.
How can i execute a method that takes about a second to complete, without holding up the code?
(..and don't worry the copy method doesn't get repeatedly called from the touchesMoved event)
You could perform the task in the background using performSelectorInBackground:...:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/NSObject_Class/Reference/Reference.html
This prevent that selector from blocking the main thread.
Example:
[self performSelectorInBackground:#selector(myMethod) withObject:nil];
Do it in a background thread. Leave the main thread to deal with UI stuff only.
Technically you could divide the copying of files into very small chunks, and tell the current NSRunLoop to dispatch between each file copy.
But practically just say no to any IO access on the main thread, all IO access should be done in the background. Even the slightest block on the main thread will make the UI stutter and be unresponsive, Android user might accept that, iOS user do not.
Your options are numerous, and easy to implement. You could do a simple performSelector–:
-(void)backgroundWorker {
NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
// Do your stuff
[pool release];
}
-(void)startDoingIOStuff {
[self performSelectorInBackground:#selector(backgroundWorker)
withObject:nil];
}
You could do it practically inline using a block and GCD:
-(void)startDoingIOStuff {
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, NULL),
^{
NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
// Do your stuff
[pool release];
});
}
Or you could use an NSOperation on a NSOperationQueue. I have written a longer blog post on this topic, including source code that is available here: http://blog.jayway.com/2010/08/19/future-cocoa-operation/
Before immediately resorting to a secondary thread, it would certainly be worth a try to use a plain old performSelector on self. For example:
[self peformSelector:#selector(copyFiles) withObject:nil afterDelay:0.0];
Note that this is different from doing:
[self copyFiles];
The peformSelector version basically says "do copyFiles ASAP, OK?", but doesn't block everything while waiting for it to be done. In other words, it's possible that the perform selector version would allow the main event loop to update the UI (thereby preventing the apparent visual lag) before the file copying is actually done.
I am creating an iPhone application where I need to show a login screen for few minutes, hence I created the custom view and added to the custom view controller which is added to the window for display. Now at the same time I need to check for some background database so, I am creating that in separate delegate and while after database operation is in finished it gives an callback to the main thread to display the new screen. But the first view is never getting displayed and my application directly lands up in the new view.
Please find below my code snippet:
(void)CheckForExistingData : (DatabaseSource *)theDatabaseConnection
{
BOOL isRecordExist = theDatabaseConnection.isrecordExist;
// Release the connection....
[theDatabaseConnection release];
theDatabaseConnection = nil;
if (isRecordExist == FALSE)
{
textLabel.text = #"Preparing the application for first time use, please wait....";
[activityIndicator startAnimating];
[self setNeedsDisplay];
}
else
{
// Now all categories are successfully downloaded, launch the category screen...
sleep(2); // sleep for 1 second to allow to show the splash screen....
[self.viewController LaunchCategoryViewController:self];
}
}
Here CheckForExistingData is an callback mechanism which will be called from the other thread.
You need to exit your method to see anything displayed. Not sleep or wait on a synchronous network call.
That probably means you need to break your sequential code into multiple methods, the subsequent parts being called by a splash wait timer, the view button handler, or the async network activity completion callback.
sleep() blocks your main thread, thus the UI has no chance to update.
But you can always send messages delayed. In your case, it would look like this:
[self.viewController performSelector:#selector(LaunchCategoryViewController:) withObject:self afterDelay:2.0];
I have a problem regarding UIActivityIndicator. I applied [spinner startAnimating] at the IBAction on a button and then doing some process. After the process activityindicator should be stopped and then navigate to another view. But the activity indicator does not appear. When I remove the line "[spinner stopAnimating]" then the indicator appears but not at the instant button is pressed. It appears just before the other view loads, and apparently does not appear, I mean it does not appear but if we see very carefully then only it appears for an instant.
Thanx in advance for any answer.
Ole is pretty much correct, but there is a trick of you don't mind synchronous processing (often that it why you want to display the activity indicator in the first place).
First move your code that you want to process while the spinner is up to its own method. Then do
[spinner startAnimating];
[self performSelector:#selector(methodname) withObject:nil afterDelay:0];
The afterDelay:0 means on the next time through the run loop. That way the spinner gets started.
The animation will not start until your code returns control to the run loop. If your processing task blocks the main thread, the no UI updates will take place until it is finished. You should do your processing asynchronously (e.g. by starting an NSOperation).
you should run in perform selector .
for ex:
[self performSelector:#selector(animation) withObject:nil afterDelay:0]
-(void)animation
{
NSAutoreleasepool *pool = [[NSAutorepleasepool alloc]init];
[indicatorView startAnimating];
[pool release];
}
This is an old question. I leaving my answer here, so that might help someone to solve their problem.