How do I set a request timeout and cache policy in AFNetworking 2.0?

Question

I'm following the given example code

AFHTTPRequestOperationManager *manager = [AFHTTPRequestOperationManager manager];
[manager GET:@"http://example.com/resources.json" parameters:nil success:^(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, id responseObject) {
    NSLog(@"JSON: %@", responseObject);
} failure:^(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, NSError *error) {
    NSLog(@"Error: %@", error);
}];

To change the timeout and cache policy I 'hacked' the library and created

- (AFHTTPRequestOperation *)GET:(NSString *)URLString
                     parameters:(NSDictionary *)parameters
                          timeoutInterval:(NSTimeInterval)timeoutInterval
                    cachePolicy:(NSURLRequestCachePolicy)cachePolicy
                        success:(void (^)(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, id responseObject))success
                        failure:(void (^)(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, NSError *error))failure
{
    NSMutableURLRequest *request = [self.requestSerializer requestWithMethod:@"GET" URLString:[[NSURL URLWithString:URLString relativeToURL:self.baseURL] absoluteString] parameters:parameters];
    [request setTimeoutInterval:timeoutInterval];
    [request setCachePolicy:cachePolicy];
    AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation = [self HTTPRequestOperationWithRequest:request success:success failure:failure];
    [self.operationQueue addOperation:operation];

    return operation;
}

Is there a clean way of doing this?

Solution 1

I'm a bit lazy to categorize or subclass. You can access the manager's request serializer directly:

AFHTTPRequestOperationManager *manager = [AFHTTPRequestOperationManager manager];
manager.requestSerializer.timeoutInterval = INTERNET_TIMEOUT;
manager.requestSerializer.cachePolicy = NSURLRequestReloadIgnoringLocalAndRemoteCacheData;

Solution 2

The best is to create a subclass

(you can also the same way add cache policy)

TimeoutAFHTTPRequestSerializer.h

#import "AFURLRequestSerialization.h"

@interface TimeoutAFHTTPRequestSerializer : AFHTTPRequestSerializer

@property (nonatomic, assign) NSTimeInterval timeout;

- (id)initWithTimeout:(NSTimeInterval)timeout;

@end

TimeoutAFHTTPRequestSerializer.m

#import "TimeoutAFHTTPRequestSerializer.h"

@implementation TimeoutAFHTTPRequestSerializer

- (id)initWithTimeout:(NSTimeInterval)timeout {

    self = [super init];
    if (self) {
        self.timeout = timeout;
    }
    return self;

}

- (NSMutableURLRequest *)requestWithMethod:(NSString *)method
                                 URLString:(NSString *)URLString
                                parameters:(NSDictionary *)parameters
                                     error:(NSError *__autoreleasing *)error
{
    NSMutableURLRequest *request = [super requestWithMethod:method URLString:URLString parameters:parameters error:error];

    if (self.timeout > 0) {
        [request setTimeoutInterval:self.timeout];
    }
    return request;
}

@end

Use

self.requestOperationManager.requestSerializer = [[TimeoutAFHTTPRequestSerializer alloc] initWithTimeout:30];

Solution 3

You can also create a category AFHTTPRequestOperationManager+timeout to add this method without having to subclass AFHTTPRequestOperationManager.

Solution 4

Try something like :

NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url cachePolicy:NSURLRequestUseProtocolCachePolicy timeoutInterval:kRequestTimout];

where kRequestTimout is the timeout duration you want

Then build your serialized request :

NSURLRequest *serializedRequest = [self.requestOperationManager.requestSerializer requestBySerializingRequest:request withParameters:parameters error:&error];

And create & add your request operation :

AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation = [[AFHTTPRequestOperation alloc] initWithRequest:serializedRequest];
[operation setCompletionBlockWithSuccess:successBlock failure:failureBlock];
[self.requestOperationManager.operationQueue addOperation:operation];

Solution 5

Take a look at Method 1 for a cleaner way to do it: https://stackoverflow.com/a/21238330/435040

The difference is that I'm using subclassing and I'm not patching AFNetworking's code.

One thing that I forgot to mention. In that answer I'm only changing the timeout interval, but adding some other caching policy is just 1 more line of code.

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Comments

[rckoenes]

A clean way to the have your own class extend the AFHTTPRequestOperationManager and add the method to that class.

[joao]

That is indeed a good point... I'll do that for the time being.

[David Snabel-Caunt]

There's no cleaner way. The utility methods are terse and don't include all the parameters that you might want to set.