How to save the content in UIWebView for faster loading on next launch?

Question

I know that there are some caching classes introduced in the iphone sdk recently, and there is also a TTURLRequest from three20's library that allows you to cache a request to a URL. However, because I am loading the web page in UIWebView by calling UIWebView's loadRequest, those techniques are not really applicable.

Any ideas how I can save a web page so that on next app launch, I don't have to fetch from the web again for the full page? The page itself already have some ajax mechanism that updates parts of itself automatically.

Answer 1

There are a bunch of articles about the way the cache of the UIWebView works and the global feeling is that even if some mechanisms seems to work OK under MacOS X, the same approaches may have curious behavior under iPhone.

---

HOWEVER, I'm doing it by playing with the global cache that is accessed by any NSURLConnection, UIWebView included. And in my case, it works ;).

What you need to understand is the global flow:

• YOU -> loadRequest on a UIWebView
• This goes into NSURLCache to ask "is there something cached for this request?":

- (NSCachedURLResponse *)cachedResponseForRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request

From that, here's what I do to handle the cache on the disk, on my side, to speed up the load of a UIWebView:

• Subclass the NSURLCache and override the get control over the -(NSCachedURLResponse *)cachedResponseForRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request selector
• Reimplement this selector in such a way that if nothing has been written on the FS for this request (no cache), then do the request on your side and store the content on FS. Otherwise, return what has been previously cached.
• Create an instance of your subclass and set it to the system so that it is used by your application

---

Now the code :

MyCache.h

@interface MyCache : NSURLCache {
}
@end

MyCache.m

@implementation MyCache

-(NSCachedURLResponse *)cachedResponseForRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request {
    NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
    NSLog(@"CACHE REQUEST S%@", request);
    NSString *documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];
    NSArray* tokens = [request.URL.relativePath componentsSeparatedByString:@"/"];
    if (tokens==nil) {
        NSLog(@"ignoring cache for %@", request);
        return nil;
    }
    NSString* pathWithoutRessourceName=@"";
    for (int i=0; i<[tokens count]-1; i++) {
        pathWithoutRessourceName = [pathWithoutRessourceName stringByAppendingString:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@", [tokens objectAtIndex:i], @"/"]];
    }
    NSString* absolutePath = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@", documentsDirectory, pathWithoutRessourceName];
    NSString* absolutePathWithRessourceName = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@", documentsDirectory, request.URL.relativePath];
    NSString* ressourceName = [absolutePathWithRessourceName stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:absolutePath withString:@""];
    NSCachedURLResponse* cacheResponse  = nil;
    //we're only caching .png, .js, .cgz, .jgz
    if (
        [ressourceName rangeOfString:@".png"].location!=NSNotFound || 
        [ressourceName rangeOfString:@".js"].location!=NSNotFound ||
        [ressourceName rangeOfString:@".cgz"].location!=NSNotFound || 
        [ressourceName rangeOfString:@".jgz"].location!=NSNotFound) {
        NSString* storagePath = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/myCache%@", documentsDirectory, request.URL.relativePath];
        //this ressource is candidate for cache.
        NSData* content;
        NSError* error = nil;
        //is it already cached ? 
        if ([[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:storagePath]) {
            //NSLog(@"CACHE FOUND for %@", request.URL.relativePath);
            content = [[NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:storagePath] retain];
            NSURLResponse* response = [[NSURLResponse alloc] initWithURL:request.URL MIMEType:@"" expectedContentLength:[content length] textEncodingName:nil];
            cacheResponse = [[NSCachedURLResponse alloc] initWithResponse:response data:content];
        } else {
            //trick here : if no cache, populate it asynchronously and return nil
            [NSThread detachNewThreadSelector:@selector(populateCacheFor:) toTarget:self withObject:request];
        }
    } else {
        NSLog(@"ignoring cache for %@", request);
    }
    return cacheResponse;
}

-(void)populateCacheFor:(NSURLRequest*)request {
    NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
    NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
    //NSLog(@"PATH S%@", paths);
    NSString *documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];
    NSArray* tokens = [request.URL.relativePath componentsSeparatedByString:@"/"];
    NSString* pathWithoutRessourceName=@"";
    for (int i=0; i<[tokens count]-1; i++) {
        pathWithoutRessourceName = [pathWithoutRessourceName stringByAppendingString:[NSString     stringWithFormat:@"%@%@", [tokens objectAtIndex:i], @"/"]];
    }
    NSString* absolutePath = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/myCache%@", documentsDirectory, pathWithoutRessourceName];
    //NSString* absolutePathWithRessourceName = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@", documentsDirectory, request.URL.relativePath];
    //NSString* ressourceName = [absolutePathWithRessourceName stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:absolutePath withString:@""];
    NSString* storagePath = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/myCache%@", documentsDirectory, request.URL.relativePath];
    NSData* content;
    NSError* error = nil;
    NSCachedURLResponse* cacheResponse  = nil;
    NSLog(@"NO CACHE FOUND for %@", request.URL);
    //NSLog(@"retrieving content (timeout=%f) for %@ ...", [request timeoutInterval], request.URL);
    content = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:request.URL options:1 error:&error];
    //NSLog(@"content retrieved for %@  / error:%@", request.URL, error);
    if (error!=nil) {
        NSLog(@"ERROR %@ info:%@", error, error.userInfo);
        NSLog(@"Cache not populated for %@", request.URL);
    } else {
        NSURLResponse* response = [[NSURLResponse alloc] initWithURL:request.URL MIMEType:@"" expectedContentLength:[content length] textEncodingName:nil];
        cacheResponse = [[NSCachedURLResponse alloc] initWithResponse:response data:content];
        //the store is invoked automatically.
        [[NSFileManager defaultManager] createDirectoryAtPath:absolutePath withIntermediateDirectories:YES attributes:nil error:&error];
        BOOL ok;// = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] createDirectoryAtPath:absolutePath withIntermediateDirectories:YES attributes:nil error:&error];
        ok = [content writeToFile:storagePath atomically:YES];
        NSLog(@"Caching %@ : %@", storagePath , ok?@"OK":@"KO");
    }
    [pool release];
}
@end

And the use of it in your application:

NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString* documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];
NSString* diskCachePath = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/%@", documentsDirectory, @"myCache"];
NSError* error; 
[[NSFileManager defaultManager] createDirectoryAtPath:diskCachePath withIntermediateDirectories:YES attributes:nil error:&error];
MyCache* cacheMngr = [[MyCache alloc] initWithMemoryCapacity:10000 diskCapacity:100000000 diskPath:diskCachePath];
[NSURLCache setSharedURLCache:cacheMngr];

This code deserves a lot of cleanup.. but the main things should be in there. I had a lot of trouble to get this working, hope this helps.