Question

In my app (iOS) data upload (http post) sometimes fails (timeout) on bad networks (EDGE).

What is the best strategy for retrying?

Should i retry immediatly or should i wait for “better” network conditions?
How could that be achieved?

Answer 1

There are many ways to handle this, but which you choose very much depends on your application, and how critical the data you’re posting is:

1. Assuming you’re doing this in the background (asynchronously), just keep retrying until it works – maybe up to a maximum number of times.
2. Inform the user and ask them if they want to try again (let them know they need a network connection).
3. Store a cache of all un-transmitted data and try again after a period of time, or on app restart or when the app is backgrounded.

There’s no best strategy – it all depends on the use case for your app.