What's the best way to implement a download queue in iPhone? Can this be done with the ASIHTTPRequest library?
I think it is not difficult to implement one. Here is my strategy:
1/ You have an array of tasks (to be simple, just an array of urls) to store the list of download urls
2/ You can have a singleton object that Whenever, you put url into the queue, you inform it.
3/ When the singleton object is informed, it checks if it is free to do the job. If it is, it takes the first url out of the queue, call asynchronous request to the server. It set its state to be busy.
4/ When the asynchronous request call back, the singleton checks the queue again to see if it is empty. If it is not, then get the next url, do the step 3 again. If it is empty, then the singleton object set its state to be free, then the next object put something into the download queue can inform the singleton object.
You can have many asynchronous request at the time by checking against a constant number. And yes, you can call asynchronous request with ASIHTTPRequest library.
I don't know if there is any library do this job for you, but I think it is easy to implement.
ASIHTTPRequest includes the ASINetworkQueue object which can be used as a download queue, see:
http://allseeing-i.com/ASIHTTPRequest/How-to-use#about_ASINetworkQueues
You can then track overall process like so:
http://allseeing-i.com/ASIHTTPRequest/How-to-use#tracking_download_progress_for_a_set_of_requests
Related
I'm trying to do multiple request in background to download many jsons and check data from them but I don't know how to use AFNetworking in that case.
I tried to do like Wiki explaings but when it's going to download the second file then the app breaks. I want to do all the process in background.
Thanks
AFNetworking will definitely handle this. We use it for exchanging data with a RESTful set of services. The things to keep in mind:
An operation (eg. AFHTTPRequestOperation) can only be used once.
An operation is asynchronous.
Put your operations in an NSOperationQueue, or use AFHTTPClient (suggested) to manage the operations for you.
When sending multiple requests, always assume that the responses will come back in a random sequence. There is no guarantee that you will get the responses in the same sequence as the requests.
Hope this helps to point you towards a solution to your problem. Without more detail in your question, it's difficult to give you a specific answer.
Check out AFHTTPClient's
enqueueBatchOfHTTPRequestOperations:progressBlock:completionBlock:, which lets you enqueue multiple requests operations at once with the added bonus of having a completion handler that is called when all of those requests have finished, as well as a block for tracking the progress. Also note, that every single operation can still have its own completion handler (useful if you have to process the results of a request, for example).
If you don't need to customize the request operation (and don't need individual completion blocks), you can also use enqueueBatchOfHTTPRequestOperationsWithRequests:progressBlock:completionBlock:, which allows you to pass an array of NSURLRequest directly without having to build the operations yourself.
Sorry to bother with yet another NSURLConnection question, adding to the over one thousand already here.
The scenario is as follows. In an iPhone app using dynamically loaded augmented reality features, the user is prompted to download new AR models as these are made available. The models can be several MB large, so the user should be given an indication of the total size of all models to be downloaded before deciding to do so.
To find out how large each file is I want to use an asynchronous NSURLConnection but then to stop the download once I have got the response ([NSURLResponse expectedContentLength]). I can do this in the delegate's connection:didReceiveResponse: method.
My question is, how can I wait until this condition arises? How can I setup the NSURLConnection, let it start asynchronously and then wait until the connection:didReceiveResponse: method is called? I have tried using a NSCondition, letting this wait after setting up the NSURLConnection and in the connection:didReceiveResponse: method signalling the condition. But all this did was to freeze the main thread. Any ideas?
Maybe you could send a HEAD request instead of GET. This may depend on your server set up, but that should get you just the headers, including Content-Length. You ought to be able to use a NSMutableURLRequest so you can change the request method, and then read expectedContentLength on the response as usual.
HTTP requests made with NSURLConnection are event driven. This makes things a little weird when you need to issue say three requests one after another, where each request uses information returned by the previous one.
I'm used to doing it like this:
response1 = request1();
response2 = request2(response1);
response3 = request3(response2);
But the only way I could find how to do this with NSURLConnection is to have connectionDidFinishLoading: make the next request. But when the number of sequential requests grows, this can get messy.
What's the idiomatic way to handle sequential HTTP requests with cocoa?
You could wrap the requests in an NSOperation and then define operation dependencies, so that each request must wait on its dependent requests before executing.
From the Apple Docs:
Dependencies are a convenient way to execute operations in a specific order. You can add and remove dependencies for an operation using the addDependency: and removeDependency: methods. By default, an operation object that has dependencies is not considered ready until all of its dependent operation objects have finished executing. Once the last dependent operation finishes, however, the operation object becomes ready and able to execute.
I would advise you using a 3rd party library called MKNetworkKit. It can handle the hard work for you, so you can focus on the key aspects of your application. You can find it here.
You can and should use NSOperation and NSOperationQueues.
A good tutorial can be found here: How To Use NSOperations And NSOperationQueues
What would be the most appropriate way to chain asynchronous NSURLConnections? For example, I need to register a user with a web service. The workflow would be as follows:
Get Register Token => Use token to Register => Get Login Token => Use token to Login.
I know how to create an asynchronous NSURLConnection, but I'm unsure how to make sure the previous connection has finished before moving on. I know I can achieve this using NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest but I don't like my main thread being blocked while these chained requests happen.
We did EXACTLYA this when we built our first version of SignMeOut for iPhone. We created a subclass of NSUrlconnection and gave it an identifying tag do in the connectionDidFinish you would be able to use a simple switch/case with an enum. Works great - you can see the whole flow and example and code in our blog
http://www.isignmeout.com/multiple-nsurlconnections-viewcontroller/
UPDATE
I've modified the NSURLConnection subclass into a much simpler Category. Most of the usage is the same but cleaner using the same class
https://github.com/Shein/Categories
You can look at connectionDidFinishLoading to start another asynchronous connection. For the conditions as to which connection ended, you can keep references to the connections in case other connections are also expected to finish(probably not needed in your case). Make your class follow the NSURLConnectionDelegate and fire the appropriate connections in the connectionDidFinishLoading delegate method. You can also use the connectionDidReceiveData: method to check for credentials, etc received from the service. Go through the documentation too.
You have different options:
create a queue using a mutable array or dictionary
create an NSOperationQueue kind of easy if you use it in combination
with the new only ios5 API for NSUrlConnection
third parties lib such as AFNetworking
Block GCD grouping them (hard for NSRunLoop reasons, pay attention in wich thread the connection is running in)
I am trying to determine the best strategy to poll a webservice once a minute, parse the xml returned and then update an object stored in a shared instance. This process needs to run in a separate thread, and will continue as long as the app is running.
It seems that I could put all the code to call the webservice and parse the xml into an NSOperation and add that NSOperation to an NSOperationQueue stored in the app delegate as soon as the app launches.
Is it a correct approach to use an NSTimer inside the main method of the NSOperation so that the operation will loop once a minute, indefinitely? In that scenario the NSOperation would never actually return - this seems what I want but I am not sure if this is the right way to think about it.
The problem I am trying to solve is of course extremely common, so I am trying to figure out the correct way to implement it. Any advice greatly appreciated.
The real correct way to do it is to use push notifications. If any of your users have cell plans with limited data or data charged based on usage, they will thank you for it.
But if you insist on polling, you may as well use the NSTimer directly rather than messing with a timer inside an NSOperation. This will run on the main thread, but you could have the timer callback use performSelectorInBackground:withObject: to do processing in the background. Or you could just skip the timer altogether and run the whole polling sequence on a separate NSThread, and use sleepForTimeInterval: to delay between polls.
I would highly recommend you take a look at ASIHTTPRequest. What an amazing little class, and really well documented.
Edit:
Take a look at this answer for what seems to be the optimal solution.
one approach: create a thread and use a run loop, updating or idling as appropriate. then you can perform the request from the secondary thread and post it to the rest of the app after it's been parsed/prepped.
this way offers more control over pause/resume/delays/timing, and you can easily control the number of active requests (which should be exactly zero or one).
I wouldn't use NSTimer for this problem/design. I would create NSThread from the AppDelegate when the application starts. I would lower the priority of this thread. Inside the NSThread main method is basically a loop.
-(void)main {
while(true) {
// get raw data from url
// hash the result
// compare the hash to the last time
if (currentHash != lastHash) {
// post a notification to default center with the new data
lastHash = currentHash;
}
// sleep the thread sleepForTimeInterval
}
}
Your Model object would subscribe to the notification from the thread and parse the new data and updates ivars. Your View object would listen to the Model using KVO and display any updates/changes.