plist download time..

[romy]

Hello,

i hope you can help me. My application is an iphone version of an existing .NET/MSSQL website. It retrieves the data from a php page (generating a page in plist format). the plist file generated is about 200k for 200 rows. it's working great but the big problem is that it takes 10 seconds to load the data into the dictionary...and the file will get a lot larger in real app.

I previously tried with no success to:

- download and parse an XML file, which was even longer
- first download the plist file in the bundle and then get the data from the local file into the dict. too long also.
- I thought maybe the php page was taking too long to generate the plist file dynamically so I tried with a static file on the webserver, but it does not help.

- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunchingUIApplication *)application {
NSURL *url = [[NSURL alloc] initWithString:@"http://mywebsite/productsPlist.php"];
NSDictionary *tempDict = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:url];
self.data = tempDict;
[tempDict release];
[window addSubview:[navigationController view]];
[window makeKeyAndVisible];
}


I've seen apps downloading larger data from network in less time, and I can't figure out how they do that. If you have any idea I would appreciate.

Thanks...

[Duncan C]

Originally Posted by romy

Hello,

i hope you can help me. My application is an iphone version of an existing .NET/MSSQL website. It retrieves the data from a php page (generating a page in plist format). the plist file generated is about 200k for 200 rows. it's working great but the big problem is that it takes 10 seconds to load the data into the dictionary...and the file will get a lot larger in real app.

I previously tried with no success to:

- download and parse an XML file, which was even longer
- first download the plist file in the bundle and then get the data from the local file into the dict. too long also.
- I thought maybe the php page was taking too long to generate the plist file dynamically so I tried with a static file on the webserver, but it does not help.

- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunchingUIApplication *)application {
NSURL *url = [[NSURL alloc] initWithString:@"http://mywebsite/productsPlist.php"];
NSDictionary *tempDict = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:url];
self.data = tempDict;
[tempDict release];
[window addSubview:[navigationController view]];
[window makeKeyAndVisible];
}


I've seen apps downloading larger data from network in less time, and I can't figure out how they do that. If you have any idea I would appreciate.

Thanks...

The problem is that you are tying to read the large dataset synchronously.

Loading 200k of data takes a while. There's no avoiding it.

The code you wrote above will probably cause your app to be terminated for taking too long to launch. The system doesn't allow you to take too long to finsh handling a didFinishLaunching message. You only have a couple of seconds.

The answer is to download your data asynchronously. You want to create an NSURLRequest/NSURLConnection. It's actually pretty simple. You need to manage your NSURLConnection using a few delegate methods that give you the data as it is sent from the remote sever, and tells you when the download completes (successfully, or with an error.) If you do a google search on "NSURLConnection asynchronous download" you should find half-a-dozen sample apps that show exactly what you need to do. Here is one I found right away: Downloading an image (or anything else) asynchronously

[romy]

Thank you Duncan !!