Question

I’m essentially saving the items from RSS feeds into an array and then placing that array into another one to contain them all. For instance, I’m working on saving a bunch of educational videos by Chapter (each chapter has an RSS feed), so I’m parsing them using MWFeedParser all at once using this logic:

for (NSString *url in videosArray) {    
        NSURL *feedURL = [NSURL URLWithString:url];
        feedParser = [[MWFeedParser alloc] initWithFeedURL:feedURL];
        feedParser.delegate = self;
        feedParser.feedParseType = ParseTypeFull;
        feedParser.connectionType = ConnectionTypeAsynchronously;
        [feedParser parse];
        }

While this does the job, if the Chapter 3 RSS feed finishes parsing before Chapter 2, the content of Chapter 3 is saved in Chapter 2’s spot. While this may sound like an unnecessarily complicated explanation, my request is simply this:

Is there any way to parse one feed at a time from a list of feeds and not continue until a feed is fully parsed it’s contents are inserted into the array?

If it helps, here are 4 delegate methods that may be useful:

- (void)feedParserDidStart:(MWFeedParser *)parser {
NSLog(@"Started Parsing: %@", parser.url);
}

- (void)feedParser:(MWFeedParser *)parser didParseFeedInfo:(MWFeedInfo *)info {
NSLog(@"Parsed Feed Info: “%@”", info.title);
self.title = info.title;
}

- (void)feedParser:(MWFeedParser *)parser didParseFeedItem:(MWFeedItem *)item {
NSLog(@"Parsed Feed Item: “%@”", item.title);
if (item) [parsedItems addObject:item];
}

- (void)feedParserDidFinish:(MWFeedParser *)parser {
NSLog(@"Finished Parsing%@", (parser.stopped ? @" (Stopped)" : @""));
[courseBeingBuilt.mediaCollection addObject:parsedItems]; // Place chapter contents into Course's Chapter w/contents array
parsedItems = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; // Create new array for new chapter
}

Thanks guys!

Answer 1

Sounds like you could keep track of the index within videosArray in a variable (say, NSUInteger currentIndex) and use that in the feedParserDidFinish: method to start parsing the next feed.

Write the following method:

- (void) parseNextVideo
{
    NSURL *feedURL = [NSURL URLWithString:[videosArray objectAtIndex:currentIndex++]];
    feedParser = [[MWFeedParser alloc] initWithFeedURL:feedURL];
    feedParser.delegate = self;
    feedParser.feedParseType = ParseTypeFull;
    feedParser.connectionType = ConnectionTypeAsynchronously;
    [feedParser parse];
}

Instead of your for loop, just:

currentIndex = 0;
[self parseNextVideo];

And then in feedParserDidFinish::

NSLog(@"Finished Parsing%@", (parser.stopped ? @" (Stopped)" : @""));
[courseBeingBuilt.mediaCollection addObject:parsedItems]; // Place chapter contents into Course's Chapter w/contents array
parsedItems = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; // Create new array for new chapter
if (currentIndex < videosArray.count) {
    [self parseNextVideo];
}