Question

In my iOS app I am hitting a web service when the app loads to check for updates to various tables(entities) in my Core Data DB.

I do this in a background thread so the user can still interact with the app

The issue I am having is when I try to load a view that contains a table of entities that I access from Core Data– the app becomes unresponsive and lags until the background updating is complete.

Is it possible to have a lag-less experience if for example I touch to view my table of “Tasks” while in the background I am updating those “Tasks”?

I am using MagicalRecord and performing my creates/updates in a saveInBackgroundWithBlock block

 [MagicalRecord saveInBackgroundWithBlock:^(NSManagedObjectContext *localContext){      
        //UserTasks
        if([viewName isEqualToString:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"UserTask_vw_iSales"] lowercaseString]])
        {
            //returns a UserTask or nil if one does not exist
            UserTask *oldUserTask = [UserTask doesExist:[record valueForKey:@"JSONData"]];

            if(oldUserTask)
            {
                NSLog(@"deleting old UserTask");

                [UserTask MR_deleteAllMatchingPredicate:[NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"userTaskUID == %@", oldUserTask.userTaskUID] inContext:localContext];
            }

            //create new one 
            UserTask *utt = [UserTask MR_createInContext:localContext];
            [utt initWithJSONSting:[record valueForKey:@"JSONData"]];

            NSLog(@"Creating UserTaskType: %@", utt.userTaskUID);
        }
 }]; 

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

I ended up not using MagicalRecord to get the behavior I was looking for– I followed this post:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/11814957/480415

Now my UI is not locked up while updating entities in the background.