I am having trouble displaying an Alert in case of an Error properly.
My idea is: Everytime I download data from my backend with an completion block, I present an Alert if an error occurs.
query?.findObjectsInBackground(block: { (objects, error) -> Void in
if error != nil {
createAlert(error)
return
} else if let objects = objects {
}
Since I got more than one call in a ViewController at the same time, it may happen to find myself having more than 2 or 3 Alerts presenting at the same time saying e.g. "No Connection to the Internet".
It will constantly reload the Alert and it is a pain in terms of UI.
What is best practice to solve this issue?
My solution idea would be to put everything in a Singleton pattern and make sure no other other Alert is currently displayed.
Are there any better ways?
Instead of using a singleton pattern, you might prefer having an optional property (var noConnectivityAlert) in the class currently responsible for creating the alert.
Instead of the createAlert() method you would have a informUserAboutConnectivity() method.
func informUserAboutConnectivity() {
// If noConnectivityAlert is nil
// the method creates an alert and shows it.
// If the property is NOT nil
// do nothing (since the user is already informed).
}
When the internet connection would come back and then disappear again, some apps in the App Store would show an alert once again.
In that case, when the internet connection comes back you can directly set noConnectivityAlert = nil so that when the connection is lost, things will be handled nicely (a new alert will be created and shown).
By the way, in the iOS SDK, singletons are not used often. There are mostly used for providing a default and most common use case of a class (think of UserDefaults), or (of course) a shared manager/provider.
I have a video app that I built a while back in Swift 1 and I've been trying to migrate to Swift 2.2. It all (finally) works apart from a weird crash to do with observers.
func removeObservers()
{
print("REMOVING OBSERVERS")
if ( !self.is_image && self.player != nil ) {
if (self.player?.observationInfo != nil) {
self.player?.removeObserver(self, forKeyPath: "currentItem.status")
self.player?.removeObserver(self, forKeyPath: "readyForDisplay")
}
}
NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().removeObserver(self)
}
This worked previously using SwiftTryCatch but with the lines in place crashes with "'Cannot remove an observer for the key path "readyForDisplay" from because it is not registered as an observer.'" OR with that an observer is registered on a deallocated object if I comment it out.
If I add a do { } catch {} to it I get an error that "this does not throw" and it just crashes the same. How do I go about putting this in some form of try-catch format?
In Swift 2, the libs got annoyingly strict about errors that are truly unexpected (which throw) versus errors that the programmer could have prevented (which do not throw, but just crash your app).
(I’m not a fan of this distinction, or at least not of all the specific decisions Apple made about which errors fall in which category. The JSON API verges on the nonsensical in this department. But…we work with the API we’ve got.)
The NSKeyValueObserving docs say:
It is an error to call removeObserver:forKeyPath: if the object has not been registered as an observer.
“It is an error” is Apple code for “you are responsible for never doing this, and if you do, your app will crash in an uncatchable way.”
In these situations, there is usually an API call you can make to check the validity of the thing you’re about to do. However, AFAIK, there’s no KVO API call you can make to ask, “Is X observing key path Y of object Z?” That means you have three options:
Figure out why you’re trying to remove an observer from something you’re not observing, and prevent that using your program’s own internal logic.
Keep a weak instance var for “player I’m observing,” and check that for a match before attempting to remove the observer.
Add self as an observer before removing it. (I’m pretty sure that a redundant add is OK.)
Since you are making a call removeObserver(self) at the end of the method, why cant you uncomment above code? Because removeObserver(self) removes all the observers if registered any. I hope this solves your issue.
NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().removeObserver(self)
status is a property of either AVPlayer or AVPlayerItem.
readyForDisplay is a property of AVPlayerLayer
I have made a game using Game Center. Everything works great except for one thing. Around 1 out of 50 times, when creating a new match, either it is random opponent or by inviting a friend, my app might crash with this error being printed to my console:fatal error: unexpectedly found nil while unwrapping an Optional value. Xcode also redirects me to the "location" of the crash, which is the turnBasedMatchmakerViewController:didFindMatch: delegate method. You can see at which line of code the crash happens down below.
Why it most of the time works, and some rare times crashes, I have no idea.
It is really hard to fix this bug, because I can spend 5 hours straight trying to make the crash happen, without success. I, myself, haven´t had this crash in a very long time, but the apple review team had this crash when reviewing my app.
This is my code:
func turnBasedMatchmakerViewController(viewController: GKTurnBasedMatchmakerViewController, didFindMatch match: GKTurnBasedMatch) {
currentMatch = match
presentingViewController.dismissViewControllerAnimated(true,
completion: nil)
let firstParticipant = match.participants![0] as GKTurnBasedParticipant //This is where my app crashes!
if firstParticipant?.lastTurnDate == nil {
delegate!.enterNewGame(match)
} else {
if match.currentParticipant?.player!.playerID == GKLocalPlayer.localPlayer().playerID {
delegate!.takeTurn(match)
} else {
delegate!.layoutMatch(match)
}
}
}
Fixing this is the only thing standing in my way to have my very first app in the App Store, so all kind of help is greatly appreciated
Change delegate!. to delegate?. everywhere.
In my application I need to download a JSON file from the web. I have made a ResourceService class that have a download method as seen below. I use this service in "higher level" services of my app. You can see there are multiple of things that may go wrong during the download. The server could be on fire and not be able to successfully respond at the moment, there could be go something wrong during the moving of the temporary file etc.
Now, there is probably not much a user can do with this other than trying later. However, he/she probably want to know that there was something wrong and that the download or the behaviour of the "higher level" methods could not succeed.
Me as a developer is confused as this point because I don't understand how to deal with errors in Swift. I have a completionHandler that takes an error if there was one, but I don't know what kind of error I should pass back to the caller.
Thoughts:
1) If I pass the error objects I get from the NSFileManager API or the NSURLSession API, I would think that I am "leaking" some of the implementation of download method to the callers. And how would the caller know what kind of errors to expect based on the error? It could be both.
2) If I am supposed to catch and wrap those errors that could happen inside the download method, how would that look like?
3) How do I deal with multiple error sources inside a method, and how would the code that calls the method that may throw/return NSError objects look like?
Should you as a caller start intercepting the errors you get back and then write a lot of code that differentiates the messages/action taken based on the error code? I don't get this error handling stuff at all and how it would look like when there are many things that could go wrong in a single method.
func download(destinationUrl: NSURL, completionHandler: ((error: NSError?) -> Void)) {
let request = NSURLRequest(URL: resourceUrl!)
let task = downloadSession.downloadTaskWithRequest(request) {
(url: NSURL?, response: NSURLResponse?, error: NSError?) in
if error == nil {
do {
try self.fileManager.moveItemAtURL(url!, toURL: destinationUrl)
} catch let e {
print(e)
}
} else {
}
}.resume()
}
First of all this is a great question. Error handling is a specific task that applies to a incredible array of situations with who know's what repercussions with your App's state. The key issue is what is meaningful to your user, app and you the developer.
I like to see this conceptually as how the Responder chain is used to handle events. Like an event traversing the responder chain an error has the possibility of bubbling up your App's levels of abstraction. Depending on the error you might want to do a number of things related to the type of the error. Different components of your app may need to know about error, it maybe an error that depending on the state of the app requires no action.
You as the developer ultimately know where errors effect your app and how. So given that how do we choose to implement a technical solution.
I would suggest using Enumerations and Closures as to build my error handling solution.
Here's a contrived example of an ENUM. As you can see it is represents the core of the error handling solution.
public enum MyAppErrorCode {
case NotStartedCode(Int, String)
case ResponseOkCode
case ServiceInProgressCode(Int, String)
case ServiceCancelledCode(Int, String, NSError)
func handleCode(errorCode: MyAppErrorCode) {
switch(errorCode) {
case NotStartedCode(let code, let message):
print("code: \(code)")
print("message: \(message)")
case ResponseOkCode:
break
case ServiceInProgressCode(let code, let message):
print("code: \(code)")
print("message: \(message)")
case ServiceCancelledCode(let code, let message, let error):
print("code: \(code)")
print("message: \(message)")
print("error: \(error.localizedDescription)")
}
}
}
Next we want to define our completionHandler which will replace ((error: NSError?) -> Void) the closure you have in your download method.
((errorCode: MyAppErrorCode) -> Void)
New Download Function
func download(destinationUrl: NSURL, completionHandler: ((errorCode: MyAppErrorCode) -> Void)) {
let request = NSURLRequest(URL: resourceUrl!)
let task = downloadSession.downloadTaskWithRequest(request) {
(url: NSURL?, response: NSURLResponse?, error: NSError?) in
if error == nil {
do {
try self.fileManager.moveItemAtURL(url!, toURL: destinationUrl)
completionHandler(errorCode: MyAppErrorCode.ResponseOkCode)
} catch let e {
print(e)
completionHandler(errorCode: MyAppErrorCode.MoveItemFailedCode(170, "Text you would like to display to the user..", e))
}
} else {
completionHandler(errorCode: MyAppErrorCode.DownloadFailedCode(404, "Text you would like to display to the user.."))
}
}.resume()
}
In the closure you pass in you could call handleCode(errorCode: MyAppErrorCode) or any other function you have defined on the ENUM.
You have now the components to define your own error handling solution that is easy to tailor to your app and which you can use to map http codes and any other third party error/response codes to something meaningful in your app. You can also choose if it is useful to let the NSError bubble up.
EDIT
Back to our contrivances.
How do we deal with interacting with our view controllers? We can choose to have a centralized mechanism as we have now or we could handle it in the view controller and keep the scope local. For that we would move the logic from the ENUM to the view controller and target the very specific requirements of our view controller's task (downloading in this case), you could also move the ENUM to the view controller's scope. We achieve encapsulation, but will most lightly end up repeating our code elsewhere in the project. Either way your view controller is going to have to do something with the error/result code
An approach I prefer would be to give the view controller a chance to handle specific behavior in the completion handler, or/then pass it to our ENUM for more general behavior such as sending out a notification that the download had finished, updating app state or just throwing up a AlertViewController with a single action for 'OK'.
We do this by adding methods to our view controller that can be passed the MyAppErrorCode ENUM and any related variables (URL, Request...) and add any instance variables to keep track of our task, i.e. a different URL, or the number of attempts before we give up on trying to do the download.
Here is a possible method for handling the download at the view controller:
func didCompleteDownloadWithResult(resultCode: MyAppErrorCode, request: NSURLRequest, url: NSURL) {
switch(resultCode) {
case .ResponseOkCode:
// Made up method as an example
resultCode.postSuccessfulDownloadNotification(url, dictionary: ["request" : request])
case .FailedDownloadCode(let code, let message, let error):
if numberOfAttempts = maximumAttempts {
// Made up method as an example
finishedAttemptingDownload()
} else {
// Made up method as an example
AttemptDownload(numberOfAttempts)
}
default:
break
}
}
Long story short: yes
... and then write a lot of code that differentiates the
messages/action taken based on the error code?
Most code examples leave the programmer alone about how to do any error handling at all, but in order to do it right, your error handling code might be more than the code for successful responses. Especially when it comes to networking and json parsing.
In one of my last projects (a lot of stateful json server communication) I have implemented the following approach: I have asked myself: How should the app possibly react to the user in case of an error (and translate it to be more user friendly)?
ignore it
show a message/ an alert (possibly only one)
retry by itself (how often?)
force the user to start over
assume (i.e. a previously cached response)
To achieve this, I have create a central ErrorHandler class, which does have several enums for the different types of errors (i.e. enum NetworkResponseCode, ServerReturnCode, LocationStatusCode) and one enum for the different ErrorDomains:
enum MyErrorDomain : String {
// if request data has errors (i.e. json not valid)
case NetworkRequestDomain = "NetworkRequest"
// if network response has error (i.e. offline or http status code != 200)
case NetworkResponseDomain = "NetworkResponse"
// server return code in json: value of JSONxxx_JSON_PARAM_xxx_RETURN_CODE
case ServerReturnDomain = "ServerReturnCode"
// server return code in json: value of JSONxxxStatus_xxx_JSON_PARAM_xxx_STATUS_CODE
case ServerStatusDomain = "ServerStatus"
// if CLAuthorizationStatus
case LocationStatusDomain = "LocationStatus"
....
}
Furthermore there exists some helper functions named createError. These methods do some checking of the error condition (i.e. network errors are different if you are offline or if the server response !=200). They are shorter than you would expect.
And to put it all together there is a function which handles the error.
func handleError(error: NSError, msgType: String, shouldSuppressAlert: Bool = false){
...
}
This method started with on switch statement (and needs some refactoring now, so I won't show it as it still is one). In this statement all possible reactions are implemented. You might need a different return type to keep your state correctly in the app.
Lessons learned:
Although I thought that I have started big (different enums, central user alerting), the architecture could have been better (i.e. multiple classes, inheritance, ...).
I needed to keep track of previous errors (as some are follow ups) in order to only show one error message to the user -> state.
There are good reasons to hide errors.
Within the errorObj.userInfo map, it exits a user friendly error message and a technicalErrorMessage (which is send to a tracking provider).
We have introduced numeric error codes (the error domain is prefixed with a letter) which are consistent between client and server. They are also shown to the user. This has really helped to track bugs.
I have implemented a handleSoftwareBug function (which is almost the same as the handleError but much less cases). It is used in a lot of else-blocks which you normally do not bother to write (as you think that this state can never be reached). Surprisingly it can.
ErrorHandler.sharedInstance.handleSoftwareBug("SW bug? Unknown received error code string was code: \(code)")
How does it look like in code: There are a lot of similar backend network requests where a lot of code looks something like the following:
func postAllXXX(completionHandler:(JSON!, NSError!) -> Void) -> RegisteringSessionTask {
log.function()
return postRegistered(jsonDict: self.jsonFactory.allXXX(),
outgoingMsgType: JSONClientMessageToServerAllXXX,
expectedIncomingUserDataType: JSONServerResponseAllXXX,
completionHandler: {(json, error) in
if error != nil {
log.error("error: \(error.localizedDescription)")
ErrorHandler.sharedInstance.handleError(error,
msgType: JSONServerResponseAllXXX, shouldSuppressAlert: true)
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), {
completionHandler(json, error)
})
return
}
// handle request payload
var returnList:[XXX] = []
let xxxList = json[JSONServerResponse_PARAM_XXX][JSONServerResponse_PARAM_YYY].arrayValue
.....
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), {
completionHandler(json, error)
})
})
}
Within the above code you see that I call a completionHandler and give this caller the chance to customize error handling, too. Most of the time, this caller only handles success.
Whenever I have had the need for retries and other and not so common handling, I have also done it on the caller side, i.e.
private func postXXXMessageInternal(completionHandler:(JSON!, NSError!) -> Void) -> NSURLSessionDataTask {
log.function()
return self.networkquery.postServerJsonEphemeral(url, jsonDict: self.jsonFactory.xxxMessage(),
outgoingMsgType: JSONClientMessageToServerXXXMessage,
expectedIncomingUserDataType: JSONServerResponseXXXMessage,
completionHandler: {(json, error) in
if error != nil {
self.xxxMessageErrorWaitingCounter++
log.error("error(\(self.xxxMessageErrorWaitingCounter)): \(error.localizedDescription)")
if (something || somethingelse) &&
self.xxxMessageErrorWaitingCounter >= MAX_ERROR_XXX_MESSAGE_WAITING {
// reset app because of too many errors
xxx.currentState = AppState.yyy
ErrorHandler.sharedInstance.genericError(MAX_ERROR_XXX_MESSAGE_WAITING, shouldSuppressAlert: false)
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), {
completionHandler(json, nil)
})
self.xxxMessageErrorWaitingCounter = 0
return
}
// handle request payload
if let msg = json[JSONServerResponse_PARAM_XXX][JSONServerResponse_PARAM_ZZZ].stringValue {
.....
}
.....
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), {
completionHandler(json, error)
})
})
}
Here is another example where the user is forced to retry
// user did not see a price. should have been fetched earlier (something is wrong), cancel any ongoing requests
ErrorHandler.sharedInstance.handleSoftwareBug("potentially sw bug (or network to slow?): no payment there? user must retry")
if let st = self.sessionTask {
st.cancel()
self.sessionTask = nil
}
// tell user
ErrorHandler.sharedInstance.genericInfo(MESSAGE_XXX_PRICE_REQUIRED)
// send him back
xxx.currentState = AppState.zzz
return
For any request, you get either an error or an http status code. Error means: Your application never managed to talk properly to the server. http status code means: Your application talked to a server. Be aware that if you take your iPhone into the nearest Starbucks, "your application talked to a server" doesn't mean "your application talked to the server it wanted to talk to". It might mean "your application managed to talk to the Starbucks server which asks you to log in and you have no idea how to do that".
I divide the possible errors into categories: "It's a bug in my code". That's where you need to fix your code. "Something went wrong, and the user can do something about it". For example when WiFi is turned off. "Something went wrong, maybe it works later". You can tell the user to try later. "Something went wrong, and the user can't do anything about it". Tough. "I got a reply from the server that I expected. Maybe an error, maybe not, but something that I know how to handle". You handle it.
I also divide calls into categories: Those that should run invisibly in the background, and those that run as a result of a direct user action. Things running invisibly in the background shouldn't give error messages. (Bloody iTunes telling me it cannot connect to the iTunes Store when I had no interest in connecting to the iTunes Store in the first place is an awful example of getting that wrong).
When you show things to the user, remember that the user doesn't care. To the user: Either it worked, or it didn't work. If it didn't work, the user can fix the problem if it is a problem they can fix, they can try again later, or it's just tough luck. In an enterprise app, you might have a message "call your help desk at xxxxxx and tell them yyyyyy".
And when things don't work, don't annoy the user by showing error after error after error. If you send then requests, don't tell the user ten times that the server is on fire.
There are things that you just don't expect to go wrong. If you download a file, and you can't put it where it belongs, well, that's tough. It shouldn't happen. The user can't do anything about it. (Well, maybe they can. If the storage of the device is full then you can tell the user). Apart from that, it's the same category as "Something went wrong, and the user can't do anything about it". You may find out as a developer what the cause is and fix it, but if it happens with an application out in the user's hands, there's nothing reasonable you can do.
Since all such requests should be asynchronous, you will always pass either one or two callback blocks to the call, one for success and one for failure. I have most of the error handling in the download code, so things like asking the user to turn WiFi on happen only once, and calls may even be repeated automatically if such an error condition is fixed by the user. The error callback is mostly used to inform the application that it won't get the data that it wanted; sometimes the fact that there is an error is useful information in itself.
For consistent error handling, I create my own errors representing either errors returned by the session, or html status codes interpreted as errors. Plus two additional errors "user cancelled" and "no user interaction allowed" if either there was a UI involved and the user cancelled the operation, or I wanted to use some user interaction but wasn't allowed to. The last two errors are different - these errors will never be reported to the user.
I would wrap the errors in your own, but pass the underlying error as a property on your error class (ala C#'s InnerException). That way you are giving consumers a consistent interface, but also providing lower level error detail if required. However, the main reason I would do this is for unit testing. It makes it much easier to mock your ResourceService class and test the code paths for the various errors that could occur.
I don't like the thought of passing back an array of errors, as it adds complexity for the consumer. Instead I would provide an array of InnerException instances. If they are instances of your own error class, they would potentially have their own InnerException's with underlying errors. However, this would probably only make sense if you were doing your own validations where multiple errors might make sense. Your download method will probably have to bail out after the first error encountered.
I'm trying to integrate Stripe in an iOS app using swift. and I keep getting these error from that line: creditCard.validateCardReturningError(&error)
error 1: '_' is not convertible to '() throws ->()'
error 2: <> is not convertible to 'BooleanType'
var error: NSError?
if (creditCard.validateCardReturningError(&error)){
var stripeError: NSError!
Stripe.createTokenWithCard(creditCard, completion: { (token, stripeError) -> Void in
if (stripeError != nil){
println("there is error");
}
From the error message that you're receiving, it sounds like you're working with the new Xcode 7 beta and thus the new release of Swift. One of the most interesting and controversial changes with this new release is that Apple has modified the way that error handling works. Effectively, Apple has now added first class exceptions to the Swift language through the ErrorType and the ability to mark at the type-level functions that can potentially throw an error in their execution. You can thus expect to start seeing functions with the following signature:
func foo() throws -> Bar
This signals that the function foo will either throw an exception or return an object of type Bar.
The way that you handle such functions is through three new keywords: do, try and catch (you are likely familiar with the try-catch idiom from many other popular language). Effectively, the aim is to wrap the block of possibly exceptional code in a do, to mark specific calls to functions that can throw exceptions with try and, finally, to use catch statements to indicate what should be done in the case of the occurrence of specific exceptions.
In your case, a modified version of the following should work:
do {
try creditCard.validateCardReturningError()
STPAPIClient.sharedClient().createTokenWithCard(
creditCard,
completion: { (token: STPToken?, stripeError: NSError?) -> Void in
self.createBackendChargeWithToken(token!, completion: completion)
})
} catch {
println("There was an error.")
}
Note that Stripe hasn't officially released a new version of the iOS SDK for the beta so there isn't much yet with respect to new exception types, but I would keep an eye out on the Github repo for any updates.
Anyway, for more information on new Swift error-handling, I highly recommend the blog post over at the Big Nerd Ranch: https://www.bignerdranch.com/blog/error-handling-in-swift-2/. Let me know if you have any further questions!