Question

I am using NSURLConnection to load data from a response. It works as it should, the delegate method connectionDidFinishLoading has the connection instance with the data I need. The problem is that I want to pass some information along with the request so that I can get it when the connection finishes loading:

1. User wants to share the content of a URL via (Facebook, Twitter,
   C, D).
2. NSURLConnection is used to get the content of the URL
3. Once I have the content, I use the SL framework
   SLComposeViewController:composeViewControllerForServiceType and need
   to give it the service type
4. At this point I don’t know what service the user selected in step 1. I’d like to send that with the NSURLConnection.

Can I extend NSURLConnection with a property for this? That seems very heavy-handed. There must be a “right way” to do this.

Many Thanks

Answer 1

Assuming you don’t need the delegate-based version of the NSURLConnection process for some other reason, this is a good use case for the block-based version:

- (void)shareContentAtURL:(NSURL *)shareURL viaService:(NSString *)service
{
    NSURLRequest *urlRequest = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:shareURL];
    NSOperationQueue *queue = [[NSOperationQueue alloc] init];

    [NSURLConnection sendAsynchronousRequest:urlRequest queue:queue completionHandler:^(NSURLResponse *response, NSData *data, NSError *error)
    {
        if ([data length] == 0 && error == nil) {
            // handle empty response
        } else if (error != nil) {
            // handle error
        } else {
            // back to the main thread for UI stuff
            [[NSOperationQueue mainQueue] addOperationWithBlock:^{
                // do whatever you do to get something you want to post from the url content
                NSString *postText = [self postTextFromData:data]; 

                // present the compose view
                SLComposeViewController *vc = [SLComposeViewController composeViewControllerForServiceType:service];
                [vc setInitialText:postText];
                [self presentViewController:vc animated:YES]; 
            }];
        }   
    }];

}

Since blocks can capture variables from their surrounding scope, you can just use whatever context you already had for the user’s choice of service inside the NSURLConnection‘s completion block.

If you’re still wed to the delegate-based NSURLConnection API for whatever reason, you can always use an ivar or some other piece of state attached to whatever object is handling this process: set self.serviceType or some such when the user chooses a service, then refer back to it once you get your content from the NSURLConnectionDelegate methods and are ready to show a compose view.