AFNetworking 2 Upload Plist Data to Apache Server - ios

Question

I am writing a sample app to test how AFNetworking can be used as a replacement for ASIHTTPLib.. The old library made it simple to upload a file to an Apache server (provided the user has write access to a URL/directory). No other server side support is used..
This code has some problem, but I have not pinpointed it: executing the method reports an upload success, but the plist file on the cloud side does not change…
-(void)uploadReminders:(NSArray*)reminders
{
NSLog(#"AppDelegate Synch Reminders to cloud");
//NSLog(#"Data: %#", reminders);
[self persistReminders:reminders atCustomPath:nil];
NSString *cacheDirectoryPath = [self cachesDirectoryPath];
NSString *urlString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#/%#",kStandardCloudAreaAccessURL,kStandardLocalCachePlistFile];
//NSLog(#"URL: %#", urlString);
NSString *remindersPlistFile = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#/%#",cacheDirectoryPath,kStandardLocalCachePlistFile];
//NSLog(#"Filepath: %#",remindersPlistFile);
NSURLCredential *defaultCredential = [NSURLCredential credentialWithUser:kStandardCloudAreaAccessUsername password:kStandardCloudAreaAccessUserPW persistence:NSURLCredentialPersistenceNone];
/**/
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:urlString];
NSString *host = [url host];
NSInteger port = [[url port] integerValue];
NSString *protocol = [url scheme];
NSURLProtectionSpace *protectionSpace = [[NSURLProtectionSpace alloc] initWithHost:host port:port protocol:protocol realm:nil authenticationMethod:NSURLAuthenticationMethodHTTPBasic];
NSURLCredentialStorage *credentials = [NSURLCredentialStorage sharedCredentialStorage];
[credentials setDefaultCredential:defaultCredential forProtectionSpace:protectionSpace];
NSURLSessionConfiguration *configuration = [NSURLSessionConfiguration defaultSessionConfiguration];
[configuration setURLCredentialStorage:credentials];
[configuration setHTTPAdditionalHeaders: #{#"Accept": #"text/plain"}];
AFHTTPSessionManager *manager = [[AFHTTPSessionManager alloc] initWithSessionConfiguration:configuration];
[manager.securityPolicy setAllowInvalidCertificates:YES];
manager.responseSerializer = [AFPropertyListResponseSerializer serializer];
manager.responseSerializer.acceptableContentTypes = [NSSet setWithObject:#"text/plain"];
NSURL *URL = [NSURL URLWithString:urlString];
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:URL];
NSURL *filePath = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:remindersPlistFile];
NSURLSessionUploadTask *uploadTask = [manager uploadTaskWithRequest:request fromFile:filePath progress:nil completionHandler:^(NSURLResponse *response, id responseObject, NSError *error) {
if (error) {
NSLog(#"Upload Error: %#", error);
} else {
//NSLog(#"Upload Success");
NSLog(#"Upload Success: %# %#", response, responseObject);
}
}];
[uploadTask resume];
}
The console shows this:
Upload Success: <NSHTTPURLResponse: 0x8d4ec50> { URL: https://[.....]/CodeTests/Reminders/Reminders.plist } { status code: 200, headers {
"Accept-Ranges" = bytes;
Connection = "Keep-Alive";
"Content-Length" = 1324;
"Content-Type" = "text/plain";
Date = "Mon, 10 Mar 2014 14:48:13 GMT";
Etag = "\"3f06e5-52c-4f430180dae80\"";
"Keep-Alive" = "timeout=5, max=100";
"Last-Modified" = "Sun, 09 Mar 2014 17:48:26 GMT";
Server = "Apache/2.2.17 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.17 OpenSSL/0.9.7l DAV/2";
} } {
reminders = (
{
completed = 1;
created = "2014-03-09 17:47:41 +0000";
description = "";
title = Reminder;
updated = "2014-03-09 17:47:41 +0000";
},
{
completed = 1;
created = "2014-03-08 09:47:58 +0000";
description = "Orza!!! Ma orza in fretta... Ah: funziona? Ebbene, s\U00ec! O no?\n";
title = "Reminder Orza";
updated = "2014-03-08 11:39:43 +0000";
},
{
completed = 0;
created = "2014-03-07 11:09:59 +0000";
description = "Whatever you like; and of course you can even make it quite long.\n\nYeooww..\nReally long!\n\n\n\n";
title = "Reminder A";
updated = "2014-03-08 11:34:24 +0000";
}
);
version = "1.0";
}
The only catch is that when I reopen the app, it jumps back to the test reminders I did manually put on the server: the Reminders.plist gets never changed.
Thanks!

Answer 1

I'm assuming your NSLog of the responseObject is confirming that the plist was successfully received by the server. If so, then that may eliminate the above "upload" code as the source of the problem. You may want to inspect the data on your server (not through the app, but manually inspect it yourself) and see whether your new list of reminders is there or not. It seems that there a couple of possible logical possibilities:
If the updated data is not there, then look at your server's "save" logic, as it would appear to be failing.
If it is there, then you should look at your client's "retrieve" logic. I wonder, for example, if your app is caching the responses to its requests, and thus when you attempt to download again, perhaps you're getting the cached original response. I'd try turning off caching.
In these cases, a tool like Charles can be useful, where you can inspect the requests and responses that you're getting. That can be helpful in narrowing down precisely where the problem is occurring.
Taking a closer look at your request, I notice that you're not specifying the request type. I would have thought that your request would be a POST:
NSMutableURLRequest *request = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:URL];
[request setHTTPMethod:#"POST"];
[request setValue:#"text/plain" forHTTPHeaderField:#"Accept"]; // I'd also personally set the `Accept` here at the request, not at the `NSURLSessionConfiguration`
Having said that, given that your web service is successfully reporting your plist data back at you, I would have inferred that it successfully received it on the basis of the evidence you shared with us thus far. But maybe the failure to make the request a POST request means that the web service concluded it didn't need to save anything.
Generally, when interfacing with a web service, rather than tweaking the request, like I have above, I'd encourage you to post data using one of the standard AFHTTPSessionManager variations of the POST method (one is for multipart/form-data requests, the other is for other requests). But I can't figure out what your server is doing on the basis of what you've provided thus far (e.g. it makes no sense that the server is sending the body of your request back to you at all; it makes no sense that the server would appear to have received your request, but doesn't do anything with it and doesn't report some error; etc.). So maybe try making the request a POST request and see if that fixes it. If not, run Charles on your old ASIHTTP source code, and you'll see precisely what the old request looks like and you should be able to reproduce it with AFNetworking.