In my app, I need to make https calls to a restful web api and process the results upon return. The number of simultaneous service calls is never fixed, hence the related code has been written accordingly. The data fetched from the service is temporarily stored on an SQLite DB within the app. Following is the structure how it works.
When the user navigates to any screen or UI component thereof for which data needs to be fetched, the view controller calls a method on its designated model object. This method then checks whether the data is already present in the DB or it needs to be fetched. In case data is present, it returns the same to the view controller. Otherwise, it initiates an asynchronous service request and waits till the response comes, after which it returns the data to the VC. Therefore, the VC initialises a loading indicator before calling the specified model, and dismisses the same after control is returned from this function.
Here it is important that the function on the model waits till the response is received from the web api. This is done by registering for an NSNotification which will be issued by the service module once returned data is written to the DB. A boolean variable it set to false upon making the service request and set to true once the response is received. An NSRunLoop runs on the false condition of this boolean variable. Hence once the variable is set to true, the rest of the processing can continue.
Following are the relevant pieces of code in which all this is implemented:
[serviceModule initServiceCall:@"25" withDictionary:[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjects:@[asOfDate] forKeys:@[@"toDate"]]];
dataReady=NO;
NSString *notificationName = @"dataReady";
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(useNotificationFromServiceModule:) name:notificationName object:nil];
NSRunLoop *theRL = [NSRunLoop currentRunLoop];
while (!dataReady && [theRL runMode:NSDefaultRunLoopMode beforeDate:[NSDate distantFuture]]);
The rest of the function continues after this.
This is the function that handles the notification:
-(void)useNotificationFromServiceModule:(NSNotification *)notification {
dispatch_queue_t queue = dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, 0ul);
dispatch_async(queue, ^{
dataReady=YES;
});}
The usual process is that once the notification is sent, the NSRunLoop quits and the rest of the method completes, returning to the view controller which then dismissed the loading indicator. The problem is that sometimes this does not happen. While the notification is issued (I can see the console log), the NSRunLoop does not end. The loading indicator continues to appear on the screen and stays that way until the screen is tapped once. When the screen is tapped, the NSRunLoop ends and the rest of the process continues randomly.
This does not happen always. It happens quite randomly, maybe about 4-5 times out of 10. Kindly provide some inputs/pointers to indicate why this may be happening.
