Question

I am experiencing an issue on iOS 4.3+ with ASIHTTPRequest where a request is fired but no data (Request methed, url, headers, etc) reaches the server. The connection times out because it never hears back.

The server hears the empty request (after some delay), then hears a valid request which is of course never reported to higher level code because the connection has timed out. This is all kind of strange because the request was not configured to resend data.

Often this happens after the app has been pushed to the background for some time (15 min or more) and the phone has been allowed to sleep.

My configuration of the request is as follows:

NSMutableData *postData = nil;

NSString *urlString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@",[self baseURL],requestPath];

OTSHTTPRequest *request = [OTSHTTPRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:urlString]];
[request setCachePolicy:ASIFallbackToCacheIfLoadFailsCachePolicy];
[request setTimeOutSeconds:45];
//Set up body
NSString *queryString = [self _RPcreateQueryString:query];
if ([queryString length]>0) {
    if(method == RPAsyncServerMethodPost || method == RPAsyncServerMethodPut){
        postData = [[[queryString dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding allowLossyConversion:YES] mutableCopy] autorelease];
    }else{
        NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:[urlString stringByAppendingFormat:@"?%@",queryString]];
        [request setURL:url];
        if (!url) return nil; //url String malformed.
    }
}

// ... ///
// method setting stripped for brevity

[request addRequestHeader:@"Content-Type" value:@"application/x-www-form-urlencoded"];

if(headers){
    for (NSString* head in headers) {
        if ([[headers valueForKey:head] isKindOfClass:[NSString class]]) 
            [request addRequestHeader:head value:[headers valueForKey:head]];
    }
}
[request addRequestHeader:@"Content-Length" value:postLength];
[request setPostBody:postData];

OTSHTTPRequest is simply a subclass of ASIHTTPRequest that contains properties for a string tag, a pretty description, and other bling for use by consuming objects and does not override any ASI stuff.

Can anyone shed a light on why/how ASI could open a connection and then send absolutely nothing for minutes at a time?

Edit: Just to clarify. The connections DO make contact with the server, it just never sends any data through the connection from what my server logs can tell. This seems to always happen on app wake and effects all connections including NSURLConnections spawned by MapKit. the whole app just seems to loose its marbles.
I also see a bunch of background tasks ending badly right before this, but i can never catch them while in the debugger.

Answer 1

I didnt want to say anything till a few days passed with out the issue. The solution in this case was very obscure.

It appears the version of TestFlight i was using has a bug in it that may have contributed to this issue. Since its removal i have not experienced the issue.