sqlite and threading with iPhone SDK

Question

I have an iPhone app that is using sqlite 3.6 (not with FMDB) to store and load data. I load the database when the app loads and uses the same database connection through th

Answer 1

I've tried these two solutions and they worked perfectly. You can either use critical sections or NSOperationQueue and I prefer the first one, here is the code for both of them:

define some class "DatabaseController" and add this code to its implementation:

static NSString * DatabaseLock = nil;
+ (void)initialize {
    [super initialize];
    DatabaseLock = [[NSString alloc] initWithString:@"Database-Lock"];
}
+ (NSString *)databaseLock {
    return DatabaseLock;
}

- (void)writeToDatabase1 {
    @synchronized ([DatabaseController databaseLock]) {
        // Code that writes to an sqlite3 database goes here...
    }
}
- (void)writeToDatabase2 {
    @synchronized ([DatabaseController databaseLock]) {
        // Code that writes to an sqlite3 database goes here...
    }
}

OR to use the NSOperationQueue you can use:

static NSOperationQueue * DatabaseQueue = nil;
+ (void)initialize {
    [super initialize];

    DatabaseQueue = [[NSOperationQueue alloc] init];
    [DatabaseQueue setMaxConcurrentOperationCount:1];
}
+ (NSOperationQueue *)databaseQueue {
    return DatabaseQueue;
}

- (void)writeToDatabase {
    NSInvocationOperation * operation = [[NSInvocationOperation alloc] initWithTarget:self selector:@selector(FUNCTION_THAT_WRITES_TO_DATABASE) object:nil];
    [operation setQueuePriority:NSOperationQueuePriorityHigh];
    [[DatabaseController databaseQueue] addOperations:[NSArray arrayWithObject:operation] waitUntilFinished:YES];
    [operation release];
}

these two solutions block the current thread until the writing to database is finished which you may consider in most of the cases.