Question

Currently I am able to retrieve data from a MySQL db by using HTTP GET and an NSURL connection, but I need to know how to encapsulate this action into a method. Could somebody inform me of how to put the following code into a method so that I can call it throughout my app, and also so that I can show a UIActivityIndicator while the process is underway?

//somethign like this?
-(void)getDataFromServer:(NSString *)url{
//enter code here

}

My current server request: I am using this in didselectrowforindexpath, so that the following stuff is done whenever somebody selects a cell. The issue is that I keep re-using this same code in several different methods, so I assume that it is bad practice to keep copying/pasting this code rather than having a method.

// retrieve data
NSString *buildURL = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"http://myurl.com"];

// begin query
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:buildURL];
NSError *e;
NSString *jsonreturn = [[NSString alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:url encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding error:&e];

NSLog(@"jsonreturn: %@",jsonreturn);

NSData *jsonData = [jsonreturn dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF32BigEndianStringEncoding];
NSError *error = nil;

EDIT:
Much better way to do this, which I just implemented, is to use ASIHTTPRequest. The library provides for all the needs which I was trying to accomplish with the method above.

Answer 1

Just take your whole second code block and put it inside the {} of the first code block. You probably want to return that jsonData variable instead of void, though.