Managing multiple asynchronous NSURLConnection connections

user_40882 0
Viewed 43878

I have a ton of repeating code in my class that looks like the following:

NSURLConnection *connection = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request
                                                              delegate:self];

The problem with asynchronous requests is when you have various requests going off, and you have a delegate assigned to treat them all as one entity, a lot of branching and ugly code begins to formulate going:

What kind of data are we getting back? If it contains this, do that, else do other. It would be useful I think to be able to tag these asynchronous requests, kind of like you're able to tag views with IDs.

I was curious what strategy is most efficient for managing a class that handles multiple asynchronous requests.

nsurlconnection objective-c cocoa iphone cocoa-touch
13 Answers

I track responses in an CFMutableDictionaryRef keyed by the NSURLConnection associated with it. i.e.:

connectionToInfoMapping =
    CFDictionaryCreateMutable(
        kCFAllocatorDefault,
        0,
        &kCFTypeDictionaryKeyCallBacks,
        &kCFTypeDictionaryValueCallBacks);

It may seem odd to use this instead of NSMutableDictionary but I do it because this CFDictionary only retains its keys (the NSURLConnection) whereas NSDictionary copies its keys (and NSURLConnection doesn't support copying).

Once that's done:

CFDictionaryAddValue(
    connectionToInfoMapping,
    connection,
    [NSMutableDictionary
        dictionaryWithObject:[NSMutableData data]
        forKey:@"receivedData"]);

and now I have an "info" dictionary of data for each connection that I can use to track information about the connection and the "info" dictionary already contains a mutable data object that I can use to store the reply data as it comes in.

- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveData:(NSData *)data
{
    NSMutableDictionary *connectionInfo =
        CFDictionaryGetValue(connectionToInfoMapping, connection);
    [[connectionInfo objectForKey:@"receivedData"] appendData:data];
}
Matt_Gallagher_361030

I have a project where I have two distinct NSURLConnections, and wanted to use the same delegate. What I did was create two properties in my class, one for each connection. Then in the delegate method, I check to see if which connection it is


- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveData:(NSData *)data {
    if (connection == self.savingConnection) {
        [self.savingReturnedData appendData:data];
    }
    else {
        [self.sharingReturnedData appendData:data];
    }
}

This also allows me to cancel a specific connection by name when needed.

user_5880840

One approach I've taken is to not use the same object as the delegate for each connection. Instead, I create a new instance of my parsing class for each connection that is fired off and set the delegate to that instance.

Brad_Smith_423230
leonho_308830

I usually create an array of dictionaries. Each dictionary has a bit of identifying information, an NSMutableData object to store the response, and the connection itself. When a connection delegate method fires, I look up the connection's dictionary and handle it accordingly.

Ben_Gottlieb_66940

One option is just to subclass NSURLConnection yourself and add a -tag or similar method. The design of NSURLConnection is intentionally very bare bones so this is perfectly acceptable.

Or perhaps you could create a MyURLConnectionController class that is responsible for creating and collecting a connection's data. It would then only have to inform your main controller object once loading is finished.

user_287680

As pointed out by other answers, you should store connectionInfo somewhere and look up them by connection.

The most natural datatype for this is NSMutableDictionary, but it cannot accept NSURLConnection as keys as connections are non copyable.

Another option for using NSURLConnections as keys in NSMutableDictionary is using NSValue valueWithNonretainedObject]:

NSMutableDictionary* dict = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];
NSValue *key = [NSValue valueWithNonretainedObject:aConnection]
/* store: */
[dict setObject:connInfo forKey:key];
/* lookup: */
[dict objectForKey:key];
mfazekas_270480
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