UITableviewController without view load called - ios

Question

I am using a UIViewController (1st) that displays a list of comics where a user can select a comic to download.
The download takes place in another UIViewController (2nd) that has a tableView (with a custom download cell).
I have an NSMutableArray declared in the 2nd viewController with all the comic URLs and it's tableView gets loaded from this array.
The problem is:
Whenever I add a downloadable item to the list and open the 2nd viewController, the tableView gets loaded from the beginning and all the files start to download again.
I need a way so that I can add the files from the 1st viewController to 2nd viewController's tableView and the downloads should continue from the same stage as they were previously (and not from the start again)
Below is the code of how my DownloadCell works. Each cell is downloading multiple files. The first method is called while a cell is being created.
-(void)startDownload:(NSArray*)comicFiles
{
allComicFiles=comicFiles;
downloadedFiles=[[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
[self removeViews];
[self appendViewsToCell];
[loading startAnimating];
[self downloadFile:0];
}
Now, the second method is called to download the files asynchronously.
-(void)downloadFile: (int)index
{
if(index>=[allComicFiles count])
{
[self downloadComplete];
return;
}
SingleComicFile *comicFile=allComicFiles[index];
NSURL *url=comicFile.URL;
NSString *fileName=comicFile.FileName;
lblFileName.text=fileName;
NSString *applicationDocumentsDir =
[NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES) lastObject];
NSString *storePath = [applicationDocumentsDir stringByAppendingPathComponent:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#",fileName]];
NSFileManager *fileManager = [NSFileManager defaultManager];
if ([fileManager fileExistsAtPath:storePath]){
[self updateDownloadProgress:url];
[self downloadFile:index+1];
}
dispatch_queue_t queue = dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_HIGH, 0ul);
dispatch_async(queue, ^{
NSData *data = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:url];
dispatch_sync(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
[data writeToFile:storePath atomically:TRUE];
[self updateDownloadProgress:url];
[self downloadFile:index+1];
});
});
}
The tablewviecontroller class has a mutable array which is basically a array of file array. It has a constructor which I call from the comic listing page to populate the array.
-(MyDownloadManager *)initFileQueue: (NSMutableArray *)withComicFileQueue
{
if(_fileArray==nil)
{
_fileArray= [[NSMutableArray alloc]init];
}
_fileArray=withComicFileQueue;
return self;
}
And I am binding the tableview like
- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
static NSString *CellIdentifier = #"Cell";
DownloadCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:nil];
if (cell == nil) {
cell = [[DownloadCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
}
NSArray *comicFiles= _fileArray[indexPath.row];
[cell startDownload:comicFiles];
return cell;
}

Answer 1

Maybe in your case the solution is to make shareViewController that will be initiated once (loadView, viewDidLoad will be called once). Also when you close shared loading view controller it is not reallocated and continues to download selected file. You can implement some delegate method to notify download is completed and so on. In this way you will get shared long-living downloader.
static DownloadViewController *sharedInstance = nil;
#implementation DownloadViewController
+ (id) sharedInstance
{
static dispatch_once_t once;
dispatch_once(&once, ^{
sharedInstance = [DownloadViewController new];
});
return sharedInstance;
}