Asynchronous vs Synchronous vs Threading in an iPhone App

Question

I\'m in the design stage for an app which will utilize a REST web service and sort of have a dilemma in as far as using asynchronous vs synchronous vs threading. Here\'s the sce

Answer 1

I'm not discounting asynchronous delegate calls, but I usually end up using a threaded worker class with synchronous requests. I find it's easier in the long run to have a well defined, threaded API, instead of filling up your controller with code managing the state between asynchronous methods. You could even make asynchronous in your worker thread, although usually it's easier to use the synchronous methods unless they don't support a feature you need to use. Of course, all of this depends on the circumstances, I can think of many situations where simply using the asynchronous methods would be the best route.

Definitely consider NSOperationQueue if you go this route; it greatly simplifies creating multiple worker threads, and it also supports priorities and dependancies between operations. Right now there are some problems with it on 10.5, but I haven't heard of any issues on the iPhone.