Managing multiple asynchronous NSURLConnection connections

Question

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.

Answer 1

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];
}

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

Subclassing NSURLConnection to hold the data is clean, less code than some of the other answers, is more flexible, and requires less thought about reference management.

// DataURLConnection.h
#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
@interface DataURLConnection : NSURLConnection
@property(nonatomic, strong) NSMutableData *data;
@end

// DataURLConnection.m
#import "DataURLConnection.h"
@implementation DataURLConnection
@synthesize data;
@end

Use it as you would NSURLConnection and accumulate the data in its data property:

- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response {
    ((DataURLConnection *)connection).data = [[NSMutableData alloc] init];
}

- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveData:(NSData *)data {
    [((DataURLConnection *)connection).data appendData:data];
}

That's it.

If you want to go further you can add a block to serve as a callback with just a couple more lines of code:

// Add to DataURLConnection.h/.m
@property(nonatomic, copy) void (^onComplete)();

Set it like this:

DataURLConnection *con = [[DataURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:self startImmediately:NO];
con.onComplete = ^{
    [self myMethod:con];
};
[con start];

and invoke it when loading is finished like this:

- (void)connectionDidFinishLoading:(NSURLConnection *)connection {
    ((DataURLConnection *)connection).onComplete();
}

You can extend the block to accept parameters or just pass the DataURLConnection as an argument to the method that needs it within the no-args block as shown