SVHTTPRequest

SVHTTPRequest lets you easily interact with RESTful (GET, POST, DELETE, PUT) web APIs. It is blocked-based, uses

NSURLConnection

NSJSONSerialization

SVHTTPRequest features:

• class methods for quickly making

  GET

  ,

  POST

  ,

  PUT

  ,

  DELETE

  ,

  HEAD

  and download requests.
• completion block handler returning

  response

  (

  NSObject

  if JSON, otherwise

  NSData

  ),

  NSHTTPURLResponse

  and

  NSError

  objects.
• persistent

  basePath

  and basic authentication signing when using

  SVHTTPClient

  .
• support for

  multipart/form-data

  parameters in POST and PUT requests.
• talks with the network activity indicator (iOS only).

Installation

From CocoaPods

Add

pod 'SVHTTPRequest'

pod 'SVHTTPRequest', :head

Manually

If your project doesn't use ARC: you must add the

-fobjc-arc

SVHTTPRequest.m

SVHTTPClient.m

• Drag the

  SVHTTPRequest/SVHTTPRequest

  folder into your project.

• #import "SVHTTPRequest.h"

  (this will import

  SVHTTPClient

  as well)

Usage

(see sample Xcode project in

/Demo

The easiest way to make a request is using the

SVHTTPRequest

[SVHTTPRequest GET:@"https://api.github.com/repos/samvermette/SVHTTPRequest"
        parameters:nil
        completion:^(id response, NSHTTPURLResponse *urlResponse, NSError *error) {
            watchersLabel.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"SVHTTPRequest has %@ watchers", [response valueForKey:@"watchers"]];
        }];

If most of your requests are made to the same API endpoint, you should instead use

SVHTTPClient

basePath

cachePolicy

sendParametersAsJSON

"userAgent

[[SVHTTPClient sharedClient] setBasePath:@"http://api.twitter.com/1/"];

[[SVHTTPClient sharedClient] GET:@"users/show.json"
                      parameters:[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:@"samvermette" forKey:@"screen_name"]
                      completion:^(id response, NSHTTPURLResponse *urlResponse, NSError *error) {
                          followersLabel.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"@samvermette has %@ followers", [response valueForKey:@"followers_count"]];
                      }];

You can have mutiple SVHTTPClient instances using the

sharedClientWithIdentifier:

If you would like to set those properties on individual requests, you'll need to alloc/init the request, set the attributes, and then call

start

SVHTTPRequest *request = [[SVHTTPRequest alloc] initWithAddress:@"http://github.com/api/v2/json/repos/show/samvermette/SVHTTPRequest"
                                                         method:SVHTTPRequestMethodGET 
                                                     parameters:nil 
                                                     completion:^(id response, NSHTTPURLResponse *urlResponse, NSError *error) {
                                                         watchersLabel.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"SVHTTPRequest has %@ watchers", [[response valueForKey:@"repository"] valueForKey:@"watchers"]];
                                                     }];
request.cachePolicy = NSURLRequestReloadIgnoringLocalCacheData;
[request start];

Making a download request

You can tell SVHTTPRequest to save a GET response directly to disk and track the progress along the way:

[SVHTTPRequest GET:@"http://example.com/db.sqlite.zip" 
        parameters:nil 
        saveToPath:[[NSHomeDirectory() stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"Documents"] stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"store.zip"]
          progress:^(float progress) {
              progressLabel.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Downloading (%.0f%%)", progress*100];
          } 
        completion:^(id response, NSHTTPURLResponse *urlResponse, NSError *error) {
            progressLabel.text = @"Download complete";
            // process file
        }];

Cancelling requests

Make sure you cancel requests for which the user isn't waiting on anymore:

SVHTTPRequest *request = [SVHTTPRequest GET:@"http://api.twitter.com/1/users/show.json"
                                 parameters:[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:@"samvermette" forKey:@"screen_name"]
                                 completion:^(id response, NSHTTPURLResponse *urlResponse, NSError *error) {
                                     NSLog(@"%@", response);
                                 }];

[request cancel];

If you're using SVHTTPClient, you can do that by calling

cancelRequestsWithPath:

cancelAllRequests

Disabling logging

By default, SVHTTPRequest will log messages to the console every time a request is made. You can disable this by adding the compiler flag

-DSVHTTPREQUEST_DISABLE_LOGGING

Under the hood

All SVHTTPRequest requests are made asynchronously using NSURLConnection's built-in asynchronous methods. The completion block, however, is executed on the main thread. You should dispatch it to a separate thread/queue if it's resource intensive enough that it hogs the main thread. This can be done easily using Grand Central Dispatch:

completion:^(id response, NSHTTPURLResponse *urlResponse, NSError *error) {
    dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_HIGH, 0), ^{
        // cpu-intensive code
    });
}];

Credits

SVHTTPRequest is brought to you by Sam Vermette and contributors to the project. If you have feature suggestions or bug reports, feel free to help out by sending pull requests or by creating new issues. If you're using SVHTTPRequest in your project, attribution would be nice.