NSURLConnection download large file (>40MB)

Question

I need to download large file (i.e. > 40MB) to my application from server, this file will be ZIP or PDF. I achieved it using NSURLConnection, that works wel

Answer 1

You are currently keeping all downloaded data in a NSMutableData object which is kept within the RAM of your device. That will, depending on the device and the available memory, at some point trigger a memory warning or even a crash.

To get such large downloads to work, you will have to write all downloaded data directly to the filesystem.

-(void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveData:(NSData *)data 
{
   //try to access that local file for writing to it...
   NSFileHandle *hFile = [NSFileHandle fileHandleForWritingAtPath:self.localPath];
   //did we succeed in opening the existing file?
   if (!hFile) 
   {   //nope->create that file!
       [[NSFileManager defaultManager] createFileAtPath:self.localPath contents:nil attributes:nil];
       //try to open it again...
       hFile = [NSFileHandle fileHandleForWritingAtPath:self.localPath];
   }
   //did we finally get an accessable file?
   if (!hFile)
   {   //nope->bomb out!
       NSLog("could not write to file %@", self.localPath); 
       return;
   }
   //we never know - hence we better catch possible exceptions!
   @try 
   {
       //seek to the end of the file
       [hFile seekToEndOfFile];
       //finally write our data to it
       [hFile writeData:data];
   }
   @catch (NSException * e) 
   {
       NSLog("exception when writing to file %@", self.localPath); 
       result = NO;
   }
   [hFile closeFile];
}