iOS HTTP POST method , connection confirmation - ios

Question

I'm trying to make a basic app that takes in a persons details and posts it on a private server. My URL is kept blank for now, If I use the NSURLConnectionDelegate and use didFailWithError, it works saying there's no connection but when I try the NSLog method it says
"connection is made"
for some reason. This is my code
- (void) saveData{
NSString *name = self.NameTextField.text;
NSString *phoneNumber = self.phoneNumberTextField.text;
NSString *age = self.ageTextField.text;
NSString *email = self.emailTextField.text;
//Define the URL
NSURL *url = [[NSURL alloc]initWithString:#""];
//Initialize a request from the URL
NSMutableURLRequest *request = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:[url standardizedURL]];
//Specify that it will be a post request.
request.HTTPMethod = #"POST";
// This is how we set header fields
[request setValue:#"application/json; charset=utf-8" forHTTPHeaderField:#"Content-Type"];
NSString *DataString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"name=%#&phonenumber=%#&age=%#&email=%#",name,phoneNumber,age,email];
//Change your requests HTTPBody property
NSData *requestBodyData = [DataString dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
request.HTTPBody = requestBodyData;
// Create url connection and fire request
NSURLConnection *conn = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:self];
self.connection = conn;
if(self.connection){
NSLog(#"Connection is made");
}else{
NSLog(#"Connection is not made");
}
[self.connection start];
}
Do inform if theres any other mistake in my code.

Answer 1

All that if (self.connection) is doing is checking to see if it's nil it's not actually checking to see if a connection has been made you do that at [self.connection start];. So essentially:
if (self.connection) {
NSLog(#"Connection is made");
} else {
NSLog(#"Connection is not made");
}
is the exact same as
if (self.connection != nil) {
NSLog(#"Connection is made");
} else {
NSLog(#"Connection is not made");
}
And self.connection is not nil because you assign conn to it which has been initialized. This can be seen in the two lines below from your code.
NSURLConnection *conn = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:self];
self.connection = conn;
What you could do if you are wanting to check whether the connection was successful or not is check the HTTP Status code in didReceiveResponse: (Code obtained from Checking for valid IP for connection with NSURLConnection)
- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response
{
switch ([(NSHTTPURLResponse *)response statusCode]) {
case 200: {
NSLog(#"Received connection response!");
break;
}
default: {
NSLog(#"Something bad happened!");
break;
}
}
}
OR if it's just to see whether you can or not you could implement the Reachability code that Apple supplies or use another open source version.

Answer 2

Your code checks whether the self.connection variable is not null, which it's not since the alloc init seems to have executed successfully. i.e the object is created and that is what you are checking, whether it does what you want is a different story.