There's a lot to be said for a networking library that you can wrap your head around. API design matters, too. Code at its best is poetry, and should be designed to delight (but never surprise).
AFNetworking was lovingly crafted to make best use of our favorite parts of Apple's Foundation framework: NSOperation for managing multiple concurrent requests, NSURLRequest & NSHTTPURLResponse to encapsulate state, NSCache & NSURLCache for performant and compliant cacheing behavior, and blocks to keep request / response handling code in a single logical unit in code.
If you're tired of massive libraries that try to do too much...
If you've taken it upon yourself to roll your own hacky solution...
If you want a library that actually makes iOS networking code kinda fun...
...try out AFNetworking
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"https://gowalla.com/users/mattt.json"]];
AFJSONRequestOperation *operation = [AFJSONRequestOperation operationWithRequest:request success:^(id JSON) {
NSLog(@"Name: %@ %@", [JSON valueForKeyPath:@"first_name"], [JSON valueForKeyPath:@"last_name"]);
}];
[operation start];UIImageView *imageView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, 100.0f, 100.0f)];
[imageView setImageWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://i.imgur.com/r4uwx.jpg"] placeholderImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"placeholder-avatar"]];NSMutableURLRequest *request = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://localhost:8080/upload"]];
NSData *imageData = UIImageJPEGRepresentation([UIImage imageNamed:@"avatar.jpg"], 0.5);
NSDictionary *parameters = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:@"300x300" forKey:@"dimensions"];
[request setHTTPBodyWithData:imageData mimeType:@"image/jpeg" forParameterNamed:@"avatar" parameters:parameters useGzipCompression:YES];
AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation = [AFHTTPRequestOperation operationWithRequest:request completion:^(NSURLRequest *request, NSHTTPURLResponse *response, NSData *data, NSError *error) {
NSLog(@"Upload Complete");
}];
[operation setProgressBlock:^(NSUInteger totalBytesWritten, NSUInteger totalBytesExpectedToWrite) {
NSLog(@"Sent %d of %d bytes", totalBytesWritten, totalBytesExpectedToWrite);
}];
[[NSOperationQueue mainQueue] addOperation:operation];NSMutableURLRequest *request = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"https://gowalla.com/friendships/request?user_id=1699"]];
[request setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];
NSDictionary *headers = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Token token=\"%@\"", kOAuthToken] forKey:@"Authorization"];
[request setAllHTTPHeaderFields:headers];
AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation = [AFHTTPRequestOperation operationWithRequest:request completion:^(NSURLRequest *request, NSHTTPURLResponse *response, NSData *data, NSError *error) {
BOOL HTTPStatusCodeIsAcceptable = [[NSIndexSet indexSetWithIndexesInRange:NSMakeRange(200, 100)] containsIndex:[response statusCode]];
if (HTTPStatusCodeIsAcceptable) {
NSLog(@"Friend Request Sent");
} else {
NSLog(@"[Error]: (%@ %@) %@", [request HTTPMethod], [[request URL] relativePath], error);
}
}];
[[NSOperationQueue mainQueue] addOperation:operation];// AFGowallaAPIClient is a subclass of AFRestClient, which defines the base URL and default HTTP headers for NSURLRequests it creates
[[AFGowallaAPIClient sharedClient] getPath:@"/spots/9223" parameters:nil success:^(id response) {
NSLog(@"Name: %@", [response valueForKeyPath:@"name"]);
NSLog(@"Address: %@", [response valueForKeyPath:@"address.street_address"]);
}];NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://localhost:8080/encode"]];
NSInputStream *inputStream = [NSInputStream inputStreamWithFileAtPath:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"large-image" ofType:@"tiff"]];
NSOutputStream *outputStream = [NSOutputStream outputStreamToMemory];
AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation = [AFHTTPRequestOperation operationWithRequest:request inputStream:inputStream outputStream:outputStream completion:^(NSURLRequest *request, NSHTTPURLResponse *response, NSError *error) {
NSLog(@"Streaming operation complete");
}];In order to demonstrate the power and flexibility of AFNetworking, we've included a small sample project, which asks for your current location and displays Gowalla spots nearby you. It uses AFJSONRequestOperation to load and parse the spots JSON, and a category on UIImageView to asynchronously load spot stamp images as you scroll.
- iOS 4.0+ - AFNetworking uses blocks, which were introduced in iOS 4.
If you're using iOS 5, AFJSONRequestOperation uses JSON will use the built-in NSJSONSerialization class to parse JSON responses. If this is not available, it falls back on JSONKit.
AFNetworking was created by Scott Raymond and Mattt Thompson in the development of Gowalla for iPhone.
TTTLocationFormatter, used in the example project, is part of FormatterKit, created by Mattt Thompson.
AFNetworking is licensed under the MIT License:
Copyright (c) 2011 Gowalla (http://gowalla.com/)
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.