Does UIActivityIndicator require manual threading on iPhone

Question

I am running creating an iPhone application which performs a costly operation and I wanted to create an activityIndicator to let the user know the application has not frozen

Answer 1

I just found someone asking a very similar question with a good answer on the apple iPhone forums. https://devforums.apple.com/message/24220#24220 #Note: you have to have an appleID to view it.

Essentially, yes, you do need to start your process running in a different thread, but its quite easy to do (as paraphrased from user 'eskimo1')

- (IBAction)syncOnThreadAction:(id)sender
{
    [self willStartJob];

    id myObject = [MyObjectClass createNewObject];
    [self performSelectorInBackground:
        @selector(inThreadStartDoJob:)
        withObject:myObject
    ];
}

- (void)inThreadStartDoJob:(id)theJobToDo
{
    NSAutoreleasePool * pool;
    NSString *          status;

    pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
    assert(pool != nil);

    status = [theJobToDo countGrainsOfSandOnBeach];

    [self performSelectorOnMainThread:
        @selector(didStopJobWithStatus:)
        withObject:status
        waitUntilDone:NO
    ];

    [pool drain];
}

where -willStartJob and -didStopJobWithStatus are my own methods that:

• disable the UI, to prevent the user from kicking off two jobs at once
• set up the activity indicator