I have a requirement to make an web-service call up on tapping actionable buttons from the Remote notification.
On the Remote notification, we have two buttons "Details" and "Fetch". "Fetch" is a background action (Activation Mode = UIUserNotificationActivationModeBackground) and will send some data with out launching the app.
On tapping "Fetch", i made a web-service call to send some details which i got from remote notification.
I have used NSURLSession to send those data to server.
NSURLSessionConfiguration *sessionConfiguration = [NSURLSessionConfiguration backgroundSessionConfigurationWithIdentifier:#"com.applewatch.sample"];
self.session = [NSURLSession sessionWithConfiguration:sessionConfiguration delegate:self delegateQueue:nil];
NSURLSessionUploadTask *dataTask = [self.session uploadTaskWithRequest:mutableURLRequest fromData:nil];
[dataTask resume];
This works fine when the app is in active state but not in the suspended mode. What i meant to say here is, Once we get the Remote notification and if act after 1 hour on the notification, the service request is not going through.
I suspect, the service request is not going through because the app is in suspended mode/termination mode.
Could some help me how to make service calls in the background.
Note: I have not enabled "Background Fetch" options in info.plist.
Let me know if need to enable and implement the service calls in the UIApplication delegate
application:performFetchWithCompletionHandler:
I'm not being able to recall or find again where I read this information before, but try using
- uploadTaskWithRequest:fromFile:
I believe it's the only upload method that will work in background
Related
I have been using NSURLSession to do background uploading to AWS S3. Something like this:
NSURLSessionConfiguration* configuration = [NSURLSessionConfiguration backgroundSessionConfigurationWithIdentifier:#“some.identifier"];
NSURLSession* session = [NSURLSession sessionWithConfiguration:configuration delegate:someDelegate delegateQueue:[NSOperationQueue mainQueue]];
NSURLSessionUploadTask* task = [session uploadTaskWithRequest:request fromFile:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:httpBody]];
[task resume];
In someDelegate, I have implemented didSendBodyData, didCompleteWithError and handleEventsForBackgroundURLSession.
I have three questions:
I have noticed that if I close the app while uploading is in progress, transfer will continue and successfully finish. Is handleEventsForBackgroundURLSession called when the transfer is finished while the app is closed?
Assuming that the answer to the first question is yes, how can I delete httpBody in handleEventsForBackgroundURLSession? This is a temporary file that is not needed once transfer is complete.
I would appreciate it if someone explained, in detail, how background transfer works in iOS. That is when memory is created, which callbacks are called at which states and how the app is woken up once the transfer is completed. Thanks.
When the app delegate's handleEventsForBackgroundURLSession is called, you should:
save the completion handler;
instantiate your background NSURLSession;
let all of your delegate methods to be called;
in your URLSession:task:didCompleteWithError:, you can remove those temp files; and
in URLSessionDidFinishEventsForBackgroundURLSession:, you can call that saved completion handler.
A few additional notes:
There seems to be some confusion about what happens when an app is terminated.
If the app is terminated in the course of its normal lifecycle, the URLSession daemon will keep the background requests going, finishing your uploads, and then wake up your app when it's done.
But manually force-quitting the app (e.g., double tapping on home button, swiping up on the app to force it to quit) is a completely different thing (effectively, the user is saying "stop this app and everything associated with it"). That will stop background sessions. So, yes, background sessions will continue after the app is terminated, but, no, not if the user force-quit the app.
You talk about setting breakpoints and observing this in Xcode. You should be aware that the process of being attached to Xcode will interfere with the normal app life cycle (it keeps it running in background, preventing it from being suspended or, during the normal course of events, terminating).
But when testing background session related code, it's critical to be test the handleEventsForBackgroundURLSession workflow when your app was terminated, so to that end, I'd suggest not using Xcode debugger when testing this dimension of background sessions.
I use the new OSLog unified logging system, because the macOS Console can watch what is logged by the app, while not having Xcode running at all. Then I can write code that starts some download or upload, terminates app and then watch the logging statements I have inserted in order to observe the restarting of the app in background via the macOS console. See Unified Logging and Activity Tracing video for a tutorial of how to watch iOS logs from the macOS Console.
I want to know about the behaviour of NSURLSessionDataTask in background.
Does NSURLSessionDataTask get paused right away (as soon as the app enters background)? or does iOS give some time hopefully 30 seconds or so until the response ?
No, You will not continue with NSURLSessionDataTask in background mode with defaultSessionConfiguration !
If you want to continue execution in background then you need to configure session with backgroundSessionConfiguration.
When you are using backgroundSessionConfiguration you can't send data directly to server, you have to give file url and from that url you have to send bytes or chunks to server, and you have to use uploadTask or downloadTask with backgroundSessionConfiguration!!
If you wants little time after entering in background then you can use UIBackgroundTaskIdentifier. These are very huge concepts to explain every thing here, It's better that you read documentations from apple or some tutorial for that!!! You should refer Apple Documentation for Background Execution and Apple documentation for NSURLSession !
Using NSUrlSession with a background configuration let's me download files even if the app gets terminated by iOS. Being curious, I tried to add an upload task and noticed that it won't continue, even not if the app is only suspended.
Apple talks about "Downloading in the background" but they don't explicitly state that uploading would not be possible.
Can somebody confirm that uploads and background session configuration don't work together?
They DO work together.
What you need to do is the following:
Have a NSURLSessionConfiguration with background configuration
NSURLSessionConfiguration *conf = [NSURLSessionConfiguration backgroundSessionConfiguration:#"backgroundSession"];
Setup a NSURLSession (#property NSURLSession *urlSession)
Obtain the path to the file (fullPath)
Create the NSURLRequest (request)
Create a NSURLSessionTask
NSURLSessionTask*task = [self.urlSession uploadTaskWithRequest:request fromFile:fullPath];
[task resume];
And the task will run in background. You can get the status from NSURLSession delegate methods.
Cheers
I am using below code to create background session for huge uploads,
NSURLSessionConfiguration *config = [NSURLSessionConfiguration backgroundSessionConfigurationWithIdentifier:identifier];
NSURLSession *session = [NSURLSession sessionWithConfiguration:config delegate:delegate delegateQueue:nil];
and save the identifier to re-associate with the session later. But once app goes to background and terminated by OS then, upon relaunch I am not receiving any callbacks from that session even if I use same identifier to create session. It always creates new session that has no ongoing upload task.
The previous task can't finish this early as I have GBs to upload.
Am I missing anything here ? any additional setting etc.
Save the delegate as well in order to receive the call backs! The instance of the delegate is not retained after the App kill.
Make your delegate comply to NSCoding protocol and do the archiving and unarchiving!
Cheers:)
I have a question about AFNetworking 2 and background downloads/uploads thanks to the new iOS7 NSURLSession background requests
Is this automatically handled by my AFHTTPRequestOperationManager ? Does it automatically set my requests'session to background mode?
I saw that the AFURLSessionManager Has a setDidFinishEventsForBackgroundURLSessionBlock Method but I wonder if everything is automatic?
If my app is killed or suspended, will requests keep on going? How can I get a callback when my app is relaunched?
Thanks a lot for your help!
AFHTTPRequestOperationManager uses the old NSURLConnection so that doesn't facilitate background downloading.
AFURLSessionManager uses NSURLSession under the hood so that does. I think you still need to configure the NSURLSession appropriately.
"The NSURLSession class supports background transfers while your app is suspended. Background transfers are provided only by sessions created using a background session configuration object (as returned by a call to backgroundSessionConfiguration:)."
Suggested reading:URL Loading System