Question

I’m trying to write a convenience function that will accept an image identifier and download an image using AFNetworking’s AFImageRequestOperation. The function downloads the image properly, but I can’t return the UIImage in the success block.

-(UIImage *)downloadImage:(NSString*)imageIdentifier
{
  NSString* urlString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://myserver.com/images/%@", imageIdentifier];

  AFImageRequestOperation* operation = [AFImageRequestOperation imageRequestOperationWithRequest:[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:urlString]] imageProcessingBlock:nil
  success:^(NSURLRequest *request, NSHTTPURLResponse *response, UIImage *image)
  {
    NSLog(@"response: %@", response);
    return image;                                                   
  }
  failure:nil];

[operation start];

}

The return image; line gives me the error:

Incompatible block pointer types sending 'UIImage *(^)(NSURLRequest *__strong, NSHTTPURLResponse *__strong, UIImage *__strong)' to parameter of type 'void (^)(NSURLRequest *__strong, NSHTTPURLResponse *__strong, UIImage *__strong)' 

Any ideas of what’s going on? I’d love to be able to just call

UIImage* photo = [downloadImage:id_12345];

Answer 1

AFNetworking image download operation is asynchronous, you can’t assign it at the point of operation start.

The function you’re trying to build should either use delegates or blocks.

- (void)downloadImageWithCompletionBlock:(void (^)(UIImage *downloadedImage))completionBlock identifier:(NSString *)identifier {
  NSString* urlString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://myserver.com/images/%@", identifier];

  AFImageRequestOperation* operation = [AFImageRequestOperation imageRequestOperationWithRequest:[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:urlString]] imageProcessingBlock:nil
  success:^(NSURLRequest *request, NSHTTPURLResponse *response, UIImage *image)
  {
    NSLog(@"response: %@", response);
    completionBlock(image);                                                   
  }
  failure:nil];

  [operation start];
}

call it like this

// start updating download progress UI
[serverInstance downloadImageWithCompletionBlock:^(UIImage *downloadedImage) {
  myImage = downloadedImage;
  // stop updating download progress UI
} identifier:@""];