Question

Recently I was dropped into someone else’s codebase I’ve been able to tackle most things it’s thrown up so far but this one is a little over my head. There’s some retain cycles that I can’t figure out how to fix.

There is a custom object that wraps an FROAuthRequest, the FROAuthRequest has a completion block in which there are a further 3 blocks used, a parsing, finish and fail blocks. The completion, finish and fail blocks are all causing a retain cycle.

I know that the cause is references to ivars within the block but what I’ve tried hasn’t worked, see the end of the post for what I tried.

The following code is as it was before I started trying to fix it.The code path goes as follows:

1: Create the request:

//in the MainViewController.m
SHRequest *request = [api userInfo];

2: The method that creates the SHRequest

//in API.m
-(SHRequest*)userInfo{

    FROAuthRequest *request = [[FROAuthRequest alloc]initWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@",SH_URL_API,SH_URL_USER_INFO]] 
                                                    consumer:consumer 
                                                       token:token 
                                                       realm:nil 
                                           signatureProvider:signatureProvider];

    //wrap the FROAuthRequest in our custom object
    //see below for the SHRequest 
    SHRequest *shRequest = [[SHRequest alloc]initWithRequest:request];

    //set the parsing block
    shRequest.parsingBlock = ^id(FROAuthRequest* finishedRequest){

        NSDictionary *jsonResponse = [finishedRequest.responseData objectFromJSONData];

        [user release];
        user = [[SHUser alloc]initWithJSON:[jsonResponse objectForKey:@"user"]];

        //more code

        return [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:user,kUserKey,nil];
   };

   [request release];
   return [shRequest autorelease];
}

3: The SHRequest

//in SHRequest.m
-(id)initWithRequest:(FROAuthRequest*)_underlyingRequest{
    if(self = [super init]){
        underlyingRequest = [_underlyingRequest retain];

        //this is the majority of the post processing
        underlyingRequest.completionBlock = ^{
            //if the requests fails call the fail block
            if(underlyingRequest.responseStatusCode != 200){
                if(failBlock != nil)
                    failBlock();
                return;
            }

            if([underlyingRequest.responseData length] > 0){
                [object release];
                object = parsingBlock(underlyingRequest);
                [object retain];

                if((underlyingRequest.error || !object) && failBlock != nil)
                    failBlock();
                else if(finishBlock != nil)
                    finishBlock();
            }else if(failBlock != nil)
                failBlock();
        };

        underlyingRequest.failedBlock = ^{
            if(failBlock)
                failBlock();
        };
    }
return self;
}

4: Once the SHRequest is returned from the userInfo method (1) the finish and fail blocks are set. (For this instance no failBlock is set.

//in MainViewController.m
request.finishBlock = ^{
    NSDictionary *userInfo = request.object;

    //User
    SHUser *user = [userInfo objectForKey:kUserKey];

    //more code

};
[request send];

Here’s what I have tried
I moved the completionBlock code to a method that starts the request and used __block types and the leaks appear to have disappeared but some of the __block vars are zombies when the completion block runs.

//in SHRequest.m
-(void)send{

    __block void(^fail)(void) = failBlock;
    __block void(^finish)(id) = finishBlock;
    __block id(^parsing)(FROAuthRequest*) = parsingBlock;
    __block FROAuthRequest *req = underlyingRequest;

    underlyingRequest.completionBlock = ^{

        if(req.responseStatusCode != 200){
            if(fail != nil)
                fail();
            return;
        }
        if([req.responseData length] > 0){
           id obj = parsing(req);//<--- parsing is a zombie 

            if((req.error || !obj) && fail != nil)
                fail();
            else if(finish != nil)
                finish(obj);//<--- finish is a zombie
        }else if(fail != nil)
            fail();
    };

    underlyingRequest.failedBlock = ^{
         if(fail)
             fail();
    };

    [underlyingRequest startAsynchronous];
}

Any ideas on what I’m doing wrong?

Answer 1

Copying the parsing/finish/fail blocks and passing the request object as a param for the block seems to have sorted out my problem

-(void)send{

__block void(^fail)(void) = [failBlock copy];
__block void(^finish)(id) = [finishBlock copy];
__block id(^parsing)(FROAuthRequest*) = [parsingBlock copy];
__block FROAuthRequest *req = underlyingRequest;

underlyingRequest.completionBlock = ^{

    if(req.responseStatusCode != 200){
        if(fail != nil)
            fail();
        return;
    }
    if([req.responseData length] > 0){
       id obj = parsing(req);

        if((req.error || !obj) && fail != nil)
            fail();
        else if(finish != nil)
            finish(obj);
    }else if(fail != nil)
        fail();
};

underlyingRequest.failedBlock = ^{
     if(fail)
         fail();
};

[underlyingRequest startAsynchronous];
}

and in any request where I need a reference to an ivar or the request itself I create a block var and retain it then release it inside the finish/fail blocks

__block SHRequest *req = [request retain];
request.finishBlock = ^(id object){

    NSDictionary *userInfo = object;

    //User
    SHUser *user = [userInfo objectForKey:kUserKey];

    //more code
    [req release];
};

request.failBlock = ^{
    if(req.requestStatusCode == 500)
        //do stuff
    [req release];
};

This way Instruments reports no more leaks.