Question

I’m calling four methods that I want to execute in synchronous order, the first two methods are synchronous, the last two methods are asynchronous (data fetching from URLs).

Pseudo-code:

- (void)syncData {

    // Show activity indicator
    [object sync]; // Synchronous method
    [object2 sync]; // Synchronous method
    BOOL object3Synced = [object3 sync]; // Async method
    BOOL object4Synced = [object4 sync]; // Async method
    // Wait for object3 and object4 has finished and then hide activity indicator
}

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

Assuming you actually have some sort of way of knowing when the asynchronous methods are done, what you probably want is something like:

- (void)syncData {

    // Show activity indicator
    [object sync]; // Synchronous method
    [object2 sync]; // Synchronous method

    _object3Synced = _object4Synced = NO;
    [object3 syncWithCompletionHandler:
          ^{
               _object3Synced = YES;
               [self considerHidingActivityIndicator];
          }]; // Async method
    [object4 syncWithCompletionHandler:
          ^{
               _object4Synced = YES;
               [self considerHidingActivityIndicator];
          }]; // Async method
}

- (void)considerHidingActivityIndicator
{
     if(_object3Synced && _object4Synced)
     {
         // hide activity indicator, etc
     }
}