Dealing with two screens and one activity indicator in iOS - ios

Question

I have 3 screens on my app.First is login. Second is search and third is process the task.
On login i retrieve data from a web service. It returns data in XML format. So the data is considerably large. So i am doing that task on a background thread like this to stop Mainthread freezing up on me:
-(BOOL)loginEmp
{
.....some computation
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT,
(unsigned long)NULL), ^(void) {
[self getAllCustomerValues];
});
}
-(void)getAllCustomerValues
{
....more computation.Bring the data,parse it and save it to CoreData DB.
//notification - EDIT
NSNotification *notification =[NSNotification notificationWithName:#"reloadRequest"
object:self];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotification : notification];
}
//EDIT
//SearchScreenVC.m
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
....some computation
[self.customerActIndicator startAnimating];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
selector:#selector(stopActivityIndicator)
name:#"reloadRequest"
object:nil];
}
- (void)stopActivityIndicator
{
[self.customerActIndicator stopAnimating];
self.customerActIndicator.hidesWhenStopped = YES;
self.customerActIndicator.hidden =YES;
NSLog(#"HIt this at 127");
}
So on condition that login was successful, i move to screen 2. But the background thread is still in process( i know because i have logs logging values) . I want an activity indicator showing up here (2nd screen)telling user to wait before he starts searching. So how do i do it?How can i make my activity indicator listen/wait for background thread. Please let me know if you need more info.Thanks
EDIT: so I edited accordingly but the notification never gets called. I put a notification at the end of getAllCustomerValues and in viewDidLoad of SearchScreen i used it. That notification on 2nd screen to stop animating never gets called. What is the mistake i am doing.?Thanks
EDIT 2: So it finally hits the method. I dont know what made it to hit that method. I put a break point. I wrote to stop animating but it wouldn't. I wrote hidesWhenStoppped and hidden both to YES. But it still keeps animating.How do i get it to stop?

Answer 1

Ok, if it is not the main thread, put the following in and that should fix it.
- (void)stopActivityIndicator
{
if(![NSThread isMainThread]){
[self performSelectorOnMainThread:#selector(stopActivityIndicator) withObject:nil waitUntilDone:NO];
return;
}
[self.customerActIndicator stopAnimating];
self.customerActIndicator.hidesWhenStopped = YES;
self.customerActIndicator.hidden =YES;
NSLog(#"HIt this at 127");
}

Answer 2

Could you put your background operation into a separate class and then set a delegate on it so you can alert the delegate once the operation has completed?
I havent tried this, its just an idea :)

Answer 3

You could use a delegate pointing to your view controller & a method in your view controller like:
- (void) updateProgress:(NSNumber*)percentageComplete {
}
And then in the background thread:
float percentComplete = 0.5; // for example
NSNumber *percentComplete = [NSNumber numberWithFloat:percentComplete];
[delegate performSelectorOnMainThread:#selector(updateProgress:) withObject:percentageComplete waitUntilDone:NO];