Crash while de-registration for KVO - ios

I am seeing some random crashes with my app (although not reproducible when I run through same steps). I am observing the contentOffset property of the scrollview to take some action when it changes.
But I am getting below exception (randomly) with my below code of KVO registration and de-registration.
Is there any safe check that can be applied here.
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSRangeException', reason: 'Cannot remove an observer <MyPagingController 0x1f05e460> for the key path "contentOffset" from <UIScrollView 0x1f0a8fd0> because it is not registered as an observer.'
- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated {
[super viewDidAppear:animated];
[self.scrollView addObserver:self forKeyPath:#"contentOffset" options:NSKeyValueObservingOptionNew | NSKeyValueObservingOptionOld context:nil];
}
- (void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)iAnimated {
[super viewWillDisappear:iAnimated];
[self.scrollView removeObserver:self forKeyPath:#"contentOffset"];
}

Your unsubscribing code somehow gets hit more often than the subscribing code. Unfortunately KVO does not handle this nicely and the failure throws an exception rather than just doing nothing as you would expect. You either need to make sure it only gets hit once, or at least catch the exception like this:
#try
{
[self.scrollView removeObserver:self forKeyPath:#"contentOffset"];
}
#catch (NSException * __unused exception) {}
}

As much as I love KVO, this need to balance observing and removing is a real issue. You will also get crashes if you nil an object that was KVO observing without telling the sending class to de-register you and the class then tries to send an update to the receiver object. Oops! Bad Access!
As there is no official way to ping to see if you have added an observer (which is ridiculous given that a huge part of what goes on in OS is based on KVO), I just use a simple flag system to ensure that nothing gets added more than once. In the example below, I have a bool flag to track the observer status.
#interface RepTableViewController ()
#property (nonatomic, assign) BOOL KVOSet;
#end
#pragma mark - KVOObserving
- (void)_addKVOObserving
{
//1. If the BOOL flag shows we are already observing, do nothing.
if (self.KVOSet) return;
//2. Set the flag to YES BEFORE setting the observer as there's no guarantee it will happen immediately.
self.KVOSet = YES;
//3. Tell your class to add you up for the object / property you want to observe.
[[ELRepresentativeManager sharedManager]addObserver:self
forKeyPath:#"myRepresentative"
options:NSKeyValueObservingOptionNew
context:nil];
}
- (void)_removeKVOObserving
{
//1. Do nothing if we have not set an observer
if (!self.KVOSet) return;
//2. If we have an observer, set the BOOL flag to NO before removing
self.KVOSet = NO;
//3. Remove the observer
[[ELRepresentativeManager sharedManager] removeObserver:self
forKeyPath:#"myRepresentative" context:nil];
}
Yes, using flags to check state is frowned upon by the coding-police. But there really is no other way to be sure except to bean count.
Whatever you do, remember that some classes need to observe even after viewWillDisappear is called (but the view still exists somewhere in the hierarchy), so you can't just do the observe/remove from viewWillAppear/WillDisappear trick. You may need to use delegate callbacks to the object that created the view (and will destroy it) to ensure you never leave a KVO calling class hanging. Having said that, I'm no expert in this stuff, so I'm sure there are people who can do this with way more finesse than my patented bean-counting lol

Related

Implement a Debounced/Coalesced Pattern in Cocoa Touch like `layoutSubviews`

A number of Cocoa Touch classes leverage a design pattern of coalescing events. UIViews, for example, have a method setNeedsLayout which causes layoutSubviews to be called in the very near future. This is especially useful in situations where a number of properties influence the layout. In the setter for each property you can call [self setNeedsLayout] which will ensure the layout will be updated, but will prevent many (potentially expensive) updates to the layout if multiple properties are changed at once or even if a single property were modified multiple times within one iteration of the run loop. Other expensive operations like the setNeedsDisplay and drawRect: pair of methods follow the same pattern.
What's the best way to implement pattern like this? Specifically I'd like to tie a number of dependent properties to an expensive method that needs to be called once per iteration of the run loop if a property has changed.
Possible Solutions:
Using a CADisplayLink or NSTimer you could get something working like this, but both seem more involved than necessary and I'm not sure what the performance implications of adding this to lots of objects (especially timers) would be. After all, performance is the only reason to do something like this.
I've used something like this in some cases:
- (void)debounceSelector:(SEL)sel withDelay:(CGFloat)delay {
[NSObject cancelPreviousPerformRequestsWithTarget:self selector:sel object:nil];
[self performSelector:sel withObject:nil afterDelay:delay];
}
This works great in situations where a user input should only trigger some event when a continuous action, or things like that. It seems clunky when we want to ensure there is no delay in triggering the event, instead we just want to coalesce calls within the same run loop.
NSNotificationQueue has just the thing you're looking for. See the documentation on Coalescing Notifications
Here a simple example in a UIViewController:
- (void)dealloc
{
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self];
}
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
selector:#selector(configureView:)
name:#"CoalescingNotificationName"
object:self];
[self setNeedsReload:#"viewDidLoad1"];
[self setNeedsReload:#"viewDidLoad2"];
}
- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
[self setNeedsReload:#"viewWillAppear1"];
[self setNeedsReload:#"viewWillAppear2"];
}
- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewDidAppear:animated];
[self setNeedsReload:#"viewDidAppear1"];
[self setNeedsReload:#"viewDidAppear2"];
}
- (void)setNeedsReload:(NSString *)context
{
NSNotification *notification = [NSNotification notificationWithName:#"CoalescingNotificationName"
object:self
userInfo:#{#"context":context}];
[[NSNotificationQueue defaultQueue] enqueueNotification:notification
postingStyle:NSPostASAP
coalesceMask:NSNotificationCoalescingOnName|NSNotificationCoalescingOnSender
forModes:nil];
}
- (void)configureView:(NSNotification *)notification
{
NSString *text = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"configureView called: %#", notification.userInfo];
NSLog(#"%#", text);
self.detailDescriptionLabel.text = text;
}
You can checkout the docs and play with the postingStyle to get the behavior you desired. Using NSPostASAP, in this example, will give us output:
configureView called: {
context = viewDidLoad1;
}
configureView called: {
context = viewDidAppear1;
}
meaning that back-to-back calls to setNeedsReload have been coalesced.
I've implemented something like this using custom dispatch sources. Basically, you setup a dispatch source using DISPATCH_SOURCE_TYPE_DATA_OR as such:
dispatch_source_t source = dispatch_source_create( DISPATCH_SOURCE_TYPE_DATA_OR, 0, 0, dispatch_get_main_queue() );
dispatch_source_set_event_handler( source, ^{
// UI update logic goes here
});
dispatch_resume( source );
After that, every time you want to notify that it's time to update, you call:
dispatch_source_merge_data( __source, 1 );
The event handler block is non-reentrant, so updates that occur while the event handler is running will coalesce.
This is a pattern I use a fair bit in my framework, Conche (https://github.com/djs-code/Conche). If you're looking for other examples, poke around CNCHStateMachine.m and CNCHObjectFeed.m.
This borders on "primarily opinion based", but I'll throw out my usual method of handling this:
Set a flag and then queue processing with performSelector.
In your #interface put:
#property (nonatomic, readonly) BOOL needsUpdate;
And then in your #implementation put:
-(void)setNeedsUpdate {
if(!_needsUpdate) {
_needsUpdate = true;
[self performSelector:#selector(_performUpdate) withObject:nil afterDelay:0.0];
}
}
-(void)_performUpdate {
if(_needsUpdate) {
_needsUpdate = false;
[self performUpdate];
}
}
-(void)performUpdate {
}
The double check of _needsUpdate is a little redundant, but cheap. The truly paranoid would wrap all the relevant pieces in #synchronized, but that's really only necessary if setNeedsUpdate can be invoked from threads other than the main thread. If you're going to do that you also need to make changes to setNeedsUpdate to get to the main thread before calling performSelector.
It's my understanding that calling performSelector:withObject:afterDelay: using a delay value of 0 causes the method to be called on the next pass through the event loop.
If you want your actions to be queued up until the next pass through the event loop, that should work fine.
If you want to coalesce multiple different actions and only want one "do everything that accumulated since the last pass through the event loop" call, you could add single call to performSelector:withObject:afterDelay: in your app delegate (or some other single instance object) at launch, and invoke your method again at the end of each call. You could then add an NSMutableSet of things to do, and add an entry to the set each time you trigger an action that you want to coalesce. If you created a custom action object and overrode the isEqual (and hash) methods on your action object, you could set it up so there would only ever be a single action object of each type in your set of actions. Adding the same action type multiple times in a pass through the event loop would add one and only one action of that type).
Your method might look something like this:
- (void) doCoalescedActions;
{
for (CustomActionObject *aCustomAction in setOfActions)
{
//Do whatever it takes to handle coalesced actions
}
[setOfActions removeAllObjects];
[self performSelector: #selector(doCoalescedActions)
withObject: nil
afterDelay: 0];
}
It's hard to get into details on how to do this without specific details of what you want to do.

Message sent to a deallocated instance

Background:
All my OpenTok methods are in one ViewController that gets pushed into view, like a typical Master/detail VC relationship. The detailVC connects you to a different room depending on your selection. When I press the back button to pop the view away, I get a crash (maybe 1 out of 7 times):
[OTMessenger setRumorPingForeground] message sent to deallocated instance xxxxx
or
[OTSession setSessionConnectionStatus:]: message sent to deallocated instance 0x1e1ee440
I put my unpublish/disconnect methods in viewDidDisappear:
-(void)viewDidDisappear:(BOOL)animated{
//dispatch_async(self.opentokQueue, ^{
[self.session removeObserver:self forKeyPath:#"connectionCount"];
if(self.subscriber){
[self.subscriber close];
self.subscriber = nil;
}
if (self.publisher) {
[self doUnpublish];
}
if (self.session) {
[self.session disconnect];
self.session = nil;
}
//});
[self doCloseRoomId:self.room.roomId position:self.room.position];
}
Here is a trace:
Here is the DetailViewController on Github: link here
How to reproduce:
Make a selection from the MasterVC, that takes you into the DetailVC which immediately attempts to connect to a session and publish
Go back to previous, MasterVC quickly, usually before the session has had an a chance to publish a stream
Try this several times and eventually it will crash.
If I slow down and allow the publisher a chance to connect and publish, it is less likely to cause a crash.
Expected result:
It should just disconnect from the session/unpublish and start a new session as I go back and forth between the Master/DetailVC's.
Other:
What is your device and OS version?
iOS 6
What type of connectivity were you on?
wifi
Zombies Enabled?
Yes
ARC Enabled?
Yes
Delegates set to nil?
Yes, as far as I know
Any help solving this crash would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps I'm missing something basic that I just can't see.
What seems to happen is that the OTSession object in the OpenTok library continues to to send messages to objects in that library that have since been deallocated by switching views. The library has a [session disconnect] method that works fine if you give it enough time, but it takes close to 2-3 seconds, and that's a long time to pause an app between views.
This might be a stupid question, but:
Is there anyway to stop all processes initiated by a certain VC?
Closing the session from viewWillDisappear() works if you can determine for sure that the view is going to be popped, not pushed or hidden. Some answers suggest putting this code in dealloc(). Regarding those suggestions, Apple says,
You should try to avoid managing the lifetime of limited resources using dealloc.
So, here is how you can determine for sure that your view will get popped. viewWillDisappear() is called when the view is popped from the stack, or is otherwise pushed somewhere else. This is the easiest way to determine which, and then unpublish/disconnect if it is truly popped. You can test for this with isMovingFromParentViewController. Also, here is where you can remove specific observers.
- (void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated {
[super viewWillDisappear:animated]
// This is true if the view controller is popped
if ([self isMovingFromParentViewController])
{
NSLog(#"View controller was popped");
// Remove observer
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self.session];
...
//dispatch_async(self.opentokQueue, ^{
if(self.subscriber){
[self.subscriber close];
self.subscriber = nil;
}
if (self.publisher) {
[self doUnpublish];
}
if (self.session) {
[self.session disconnect];
self.session = nil;
}
//});
[self doCloseRoomId:self.room.roomId position:self.room.position];
}
else
{
NSLog(#"New view controller was pushed");
}
}
Ref: Testing for Specific Kinds of View Transitions
Looks like OpenTok have a bug with usage NSNotificationCenter inside of OTSession and OTMessenger classes. You can see these classes in call-stack are separated with NSNotificationCenter calls:
You can manually unsubscribe your OTSession object when dealloc (hope OpenTok uses defaultCenter):
- (void)dealloc {
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self.session];
}
You need to check if this code (dealloc) is really executed. If not - you need to fix problem of UIViewController deallocation. A lot of other answers contains tips how to help UIViewController to be deallocated.
-(void)viewDidDisappear:(BOOL)animated is called whenever the view is hidden, not only when it is popped from the view stack.
So if you push a view over it, viewWillDisappear will be called and your objects deleted.
This is specially problematic if you load these same objects from viewDidLoad: instead of viewDidAppear:.
Perhaps you should put your unpublish/disconnect code in -(void)dealloc.
This is what Apple suggests:
-(void) dealloc {
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self];
}
But this is only the last resort to remove observers, still often a good habit to always add it to make sure everything is cleand up on dealloc to prevent crashes.
It's still a good idea to remove the observer as soon as the object is no longer ready (or required) to receive notifications.
I most of the time put such a code in the viewWillDisappear, but I guess that doesn't really matter.
I believe the issue is that your session delegate is not set to nil. Just add the following in your viewDidDisappear:
self.session.delegate=nil;
You must call [super viewDidDisappear:animate]; at the beginning. May be it will fix your issue.
And better cleanup your session and subscriber in dealloc method:
- (void) dealloc {
[self.session removeObserver:self forKeyPath:#"connectionCount"];
if(self.subscriber){
[self.subscriber close];
self.subscriber = nil;
}
if (self.publisher) {
[self doUnpublish];
}
if (self.session) {
[self.session disconnect];
self.session = nil;
}
[self doCloseRoomId:self.room.roomId position:self.room.position];
//[super dealloc]; //for non-ARC
}
According to the stack trace you have posted, the notification center reaches out to an OTSession instance that is still alive. Afterwards, this instance provokes a crash calling methods on deallocated objects.
Adding to that the two different deallocated instance messages, we know there are asynchronous events occuring after the death of some objects that trigger the random crash you are having.
As ggfela suggested, you should make sure to nil out the delegates you have connected to the OpenTok framework. I strongly suggest you do that in the dealloc method as we want to make sure that after that point, no one has any dangling references to your object :
- (oneway void)dealloc
{
self.session.delegate = nil;
self.publisher.delegate = nil;
self.subscriber.delegate = nil;
}
Another odd thing in the code is that your handler for sessionDidConnect: creates a new dispatch_queue every time it is being called in order to call doPublish:. This means that you have concurrent threads sharing the SROpenTokVideoHandler instance which makes it prone to race conditions.

Inter-Model/NSManagedObject communication

I have two NSManagedObject subclasses: Parent and Child. Parent contains many Child(ren) in an OrderedSet. When state changes in a Child I want the parent to know about it.
If I was programming in another language I might use events, having the Parent listening for events from each of its children, however given that target-action is limited to view components, all Objective C offers me is use of a global NSNotificationCenter. I definitely don't like the idea of a Model tapping into global notifications (listening directly via events is Ok in my book), so it seems my only alternative is Delegation. However using delegation between two NSManagedObjects seems like a dangerous idea, given the difficulty in ensuring one party does not lose its reference to the other.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I should be handling this?
Another option is key-value observing. Set it up like this:
const static void *kParentObservingChildSomePropertyContext = &kParentObservingChildSomePropertyContext;
[child addObserver: child.parent forKeyPath: #"someProperty" options: /*see below*/ context: kParentObservingChildSomePropertyContext];
the weird constant definition exists because every observing context should be unique so that you don't tread on superclass or subclass observation contexts. To see what options you need to set, consult the manual and compare with your specific needs. Now whenever that property on your child object changes, your parent will receive:
-(void)observeValueForKeyPath: (NSString *)path ofObject: (id)object change: (NSDictionary *)change context: (void *)context;
Check that you have the correct context for your observation, then handle the change. If you get a different context here, forward the message to super.
When you're done observing the path, you remove the parent as an observer of the child:
[child removeObserver: child.parent forKeyPath: #"someProperty" context: kParentObservingChildSomePropertyContext];
Use the same context pointer you used in -addObserver:forKeyPath:options:context so that the correct instance of the observation is removed.
However using delegation between two NSManagedObjects seems like a dangerous idea, given the difficulty in ensuring one party does not lose its reference to the other.
Delegating, observing and watching for notifications from specific objects all suffer from this problem. You need to make sure that the lifetime of your interest in the notifications matches the lifetimes of the objects involved, otherwise you could easily "leak" observation info or - and this is worse - send notifications to stale object pointers. None of these solutions is immune to that, though in the case of the Delegate pattern you can use a zeroing weak reference to ensure that when the parent object disappears, the child will no longer try to delegate to it.
I pick a field to watch in the view controller that will service the request...
[self addObserver:self forKeyPath:#"clientProgress.dateLastUpdated" options:0 context:nil];
I make sure in that same view controller that I remove the observer on dealloc (or whatever passes for dealloc in ARC).
- (void)dealloc {
[self removeObserver:self forKeyPath:#"clientProgress.dateLastUpdated"];
}
- (void)observeValueForKeyPath:(NSString *)keyPath ofObject:(id)object change:(NSDictionary *)change context:(void *)context {
if ([keyPath isEqual:#"clientProgress.dateLastUpdated"]) {
// If this key path has changed, the browser needs to update its display.
NSError *error = nil;
if (![managedObjectContext save:&error]) {
UIAlertView *dialog = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:#"Save Error" message:#"Error saving inserted record, contact Tech Support" delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:#"Ok" otherButtonTitles:nil];
[dialog show];
[dialog release];
exit(-1); // Fail
}
if ( changeIsComingFromLibraryInsert ) {
}
[conditioningTableView reloadData];
}
// Essential to call super class implementation - NSArrayController relies heavily on KVO
//[super observeValueForKeyPath:keyPath ofObject:object change:change context:context];
}
Finally, when I want to call the observer, I merely update the date...
// force a save by setting the modified date and the preceeding ViewController with then save and reload from the calling view controller
// as there is an observer running watching this key value
clientProgress.dateLastUpdated = [NSDate date];

KVO (IOS 5) on simple types (non NSObject)

I'm having problems to make the IOS (objective-c) KVO work for a key of type int.
My class declares a property sampleValue of type int. As int doesn't automatically implement the KVO functionality I've overrided the method automaticallyNotifiesObserversforKey as this:
+ (BOOL)automaticallyNotifiesObserversForKey:(NSString *)theKey {
BOOL automatic = NO;
if ([theKey isEqualToString:#"sampleValue"]) {
automatic = NO;
} else {
automatic=[super automaticallyNotifiesObserversForKey:theKey];
}
return automatic;
}
The method is called just as I would expect is to be. I also have implemented a setter method for the sampleValue property like this:
- (void) setSampleValue:(int)newSampleValue
{
[self willChangeValueForKey:#"sampleValue"];
sampleValue = newSampleValue;
[self didChangeValueForKey:#"sampleValue"];
}
Setting up the observer in the observer class is done like this (dc is the instance of the observed object):
[dc addObserver:self forKeyPath:#"sampleValue" options:NSKeyValueObservingOptionNew context:NULL];
However, when the sampleValue is updated, no notification is sent to my observer object. Updating another property of type NSDate works absolutely fine.
Can anyone help me figure out what I'm doing wrong or what I should do to make this work.
Best regards
Tomo
Maybe I'm missing something in your question, but you can observe properties of type int just as easily as other types without doing anything special.
Try removing your +automaticallyNotifiesObserversForKey: override and your -setSampleValue: setter, and just synthesize the accessors for sampleValue:
#synthesize sampleValue;
int is the type of the value that corresponds to key #"sampleValue", but it's not the thing being observed. The object being observed is dc, and it'll take care of sending the proper notification when the sampleValue property is changed.

iOS - removeFromSuperview crashes the app sometimes

I have a page with a back button that takes me to an inbox. I do this in viewWillDisappear -
-(void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewWillDisappear:animated];
[inboxToolbar removeFromSuperview ];
[inboxToolbar release];
}
If I do this a few times, the app crashes and the exception thrown is "unrecognized selector sent to instance". This happens very intermittently. Any thoughts on how to go about fixing / debugging it?
Assuming the crash is accessing your inboxToolbar ivar, change your code to the following:
-(void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewWillDisappear:animated];
[inboxToolbar removeFromSuperview ];
[inboxToolbar release];
inboxToolbar = nil;
}
This will ensure inboxToolbar does not keep a pointer to a deallocated object. You could also have other issues, would need to see the crash log and more of your code to be sure.
add an exception break point to see where it is being thrown, you probably are sending a message to an object that isn't of the class that you believe it to be, after you have stopped on the exception breakpoint, you can hover over the variable to see what classes they belong to.
if that doesn't help post the actual message and perhaps we can help more, could be iOS version issue, etc.
Try checking whether it will respond to your method first...
if ([inboxToolbar respondsToSelector:#selector(removeFromSuperview)]) {
[inboxToolbar removeFromSuperview];
}

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