1.iOS8 provided asynchronousFetchRequest，and we can also create a 'private context' to fetch results, so what is the difference between asynchronousFetchRequest and 'create a private context'?
2.The type of NSFetchedResultsController's context must be MainQueueConcurrencyType?(block the UI?) Is there any solution to resolve this?
AsynchronousFetchRequest will create another context and perform the fetch on that context. Creating a private context yourself means that you can work on managedObjects on the background context without having to block the main thread while that work is being performed. If you have your own context though your going to have to transfer your managedObjects onto the main thread yourself though, while async fetch request is already doing that. FetchedResutlsControllers do not necessarily need a context that is MainQueueConcurrency, but do remember that if its PrivateQueueConcurrency, than the cache won't work and you will need to use performBlock: method in order to work with the objects. Your UI can get blocked while fetching objects for an FRC, but it shouldn't take a long time. IF you need speed from core data index your entities first. If you want to make sure you have data before a fetch, you can use an AsynchronousFetchRequest with a countForFetchRequest to just have a number returned and act accordingly.
Related
I'm using performBlock on my NSManagedObjectContexts so that my changes happen on the right queue for the given context. My question is - if I'm making a lot of changes and calling methods from within performBlock - is there an easy way to ensure that I use objects from the proper context.
Example:
I have an activeAccount iVar ( created on the Main Queue ) that is a NSMangedObject for the current account in the application. I have some instance methods that use the activeAccount object to perform certain tasks - getting data, setting data. So my question is if I am doing something on a background NSManagedObjectContext and I call one of these shared methods - is there a pattern I can use so that in these methods I know to either use the current activeAccount iVar or get a new one. Also, if I needed to do something that requires a NSManagedObjectContext - how do I know which one to get/use.
One method I have for knowing which NSManagedObjectContext to use is I have a method that checks if it is running on the current thread - it then knows to return the main thread's context or the background thread's context. Also, if I'm on the background thread, am I allowed to read the Object ID of the activeAccount that lives on the main thread so that I can get a copy of it on the background thread? Thanks in advance.
Brian,
Thread confinement can be a tricky proposition to maintain. The key thing you need to maintain is using objects in their proper MOC. As every managed object maintains a link to both its host MOC and its object ID, this is really easy to ensure. For example:
NSManagedObjectContext *newMOC = NSManagedObjectContext.new;
newMOC.persistentStoreCoordinator = oldActiveAccount.managedObjectContext.persistentStoreCoordinator;
ActiveAccount *newActiveAccount = [newMOC objectWithID: oldActiveAccount.objectID];
Now every instance you access from newActiveAccount is created in the newMOC and is, hence, thread confined to that MOC. objectIDs are persistent. The -persistentStoreCoordinator is rarely, if ever, changed on the mainMOC. Hence, the above code is properly confined. There are issues with the above technique if the source MOC is transient. Hence, I cannot guarantee the above code works with respect to two background MOCs.
Andrew
I have to ask first, why are you having so many contexts in use at the same time?
I use one for background operations and one for main thread. If I need to create another one for discardable changes, I'll just create it and pass it on, so now my self.managedObjectContext points to the draft context. I will never let my managed objects to live in a scope where they could access a multitude of contexts.
It is not entirely clear if you are writing for iOS or OSX, but with iOS for example:
If I need to push a new view controller into navigation stack I will initialize my destination view controller's managedObjectContext ivar as well as any NSManagedObject subclass instances. Since in -prepareForSegue: I know whether I'll create a draft context or just pass on my current one, I also know whether I need to initialize those managed object instances by referencing them by their IDs from newly created context or I can just pass them on.
Now inside my view controller I can take it for granted that my managed objects are always tied to the self.managedObjectContext.
My application has NSOperation subclasses that fetch and operate on managed objects. My application also periodically purges rows from the database, which can result in the following race condition:
An background operation fetches a bunch of objects (from a thread-specific context). It will iterate over these objects and do something with their properties.
A bunch of rows are deleted in the main managed object context.
The background operation accesses a property on an object that was deleted from the main context. This results in an 'NSObjectInaccessibleException', reason: 'CoreData could not fulfill a fault'
Ideally, the objects that are fetched by the NSOperation can be operated on even if one is deleted in the main context. The best way I can think to achieve this is either to:
Call [request setReturnsObjectsAsFaults:NO] to ensure that Core Data won't try to fulfill a fault for an object that no longer exists in the main context. The problem here is I may need to access the object's relationships, which (to my understanding) will still be faulted.
Iterate through the managed objects up front and copy the properties I will need into separate non-managed objects. The problem here is that (I think) I will need to synchronize/lock this part, in case an object is deleted in the main context before I can finish copying.
Am I missing something obvious? It doesn't seem like what I'm trying to accomplish is too out of the ordinary. Thanks for your help.
You said each thread has its own context. That's good. However, they also need to stay synchronized with changes to each other (how depends on their hierarchy).
Are the all assigned to the same persistent store coordinator, or do they have parent/child relationships?
Siblings should monitor NSManagedObjectContextObjectsDidChangeNotification from other siblings. Parents will automatically get notified when a child context saves.
I ended up mitigating this by perform both fetches and deletes on the same queue.
Great question, I can only provide a partial answer and would really like to know this too. Unfortunately your own solution is more of a workaround but not really an answer. What if the background operation is very long and you can't resort to running it on the main thread?
One thing I can say is that you don't have to call [request setReturnsObjectsAsFaults:NO] since the fetch request will load the data into the row cache and will not go back to the database when a fault fires for one of the fetched objects (see Apples documentation for NSFetchRequest). This doesn't help with relationships though.
I've tried the following:
On NSManagedObjectContextWillSave notification, wait for the current background task to finish and prevent new tasks from starting with something like
-(void)contextWillSave:(NSNotification *)notification {
dispatch_sync(self.backgroundQueue, ^{
self.suspendBackgroundOperation = YES;
});
}
Unset suspendBackgroundOperation on NSManagedObjectContextDidSave notification
However the dispatch_sync call introduces possible dead locks so this doesn't really work either (see my related question). Plus it would still block the main thread until a potentially lengthy background operation finishes.
I have a fairly involved download process I want to perform in a background thread. There are some natural dependencies between steps in this process. For example, I need to complete the downloads of both Table A and Table B before setting the relationships between them (I'm using Core Data).
I thought first of putting each dependent step in its own NSOperation, then creating a dependency between the two operations (i.e. download the two tables in one operation, then set the relationship between them in the next, dependent operation). However, each NSOperation requires it's own NSManagedContext, so this is no good. I don't want to save the background context until both tables have been downloaded and their relationships set.
I've therefore concluded this should all occur inside one NSOperation, and that I should use notifications or some other mechanism to call the dependent method when all the conditions for running it have been met.
I'm an iOS beginner, however, so before I venture down this path, I wouldn't mind advice on whether I've reached the right conclusion.
Given your validation requirements, I think it will be easiest inside of one operation, although this could turn into a bit of a hairball as far as code structure goes.
You'll essentially want to make two wire fetches to get the entire dataset you require, then combine the data and parse it at one time into Core Data.
If you're going to use the asynchronous API's this essentially means structuring a class that waits for both operations to complete and then launches another NSOperation or block which does the parse and relationship construction.
Imagine this order of events:
User performs some action (button tap, etc.)
Selector for that action fires two network requests
When both requests have finished (they both notify a common delegate) launch the parse operation
Might look something like this in code:
- (IBAction)someAction:(id)sender {
//fire both network requests
request1.delegate = aDelegate;
request2.delegate = aDelegate;
}
//later, inside the implementation of aDelegate
- (void)requestDidComplete... {
if (request1Finished && request2Finished) {
NSOperation *parse = //init with fetched data
//launch on queue etc.
}
}
There's two major pitfalls that this solution is prone to:
It keeps the entire data set around in memory until both requests are finished
You will have to constantly switch on the specific request that's calling your delegate (for error handling, success, etc.)
Basically, you're implementing operation dependencies on your own, although there might not be a good way around that because of the structure of NSURLConnection.
I have a Silverlight app where I've implemented the M-V-VM pattern so my actual UI elements (Views) are separated from the data (Models). Anyways, at one point after the user has gone and done some selections and possible other input, I'd like to asyncronously go though the model and scan it and compile a list of optiions that the user has changed (different from the default), and eventually update that on the UI as a summary, but that would be a final step.
My question is that if I use a background worker to do this, up until I actually want to do the UI updates, I just want to read current values in one of my models, I don't have to synchronize access to the model right? I'm not modifying data just reading current values...
There are Lists (ObservableCollections), so I will have to call methods of those collections like "_ABCCollection.GetSelectedItems()" but again I'm just reading, I'm not making changes. Since they are not primitives, will I have to synchronize access to them for just reads, or does that not matter?
I assume I'll have to sychronize my final step as it will cause PropertyChanged events to fire and eventually the Views will request the new data through the bindings...
Thanks in advance for any and all advice.
You are correct. You can read from your Model objects and ObservableCollections on a worker thread without having a cross-thread violation. Getting or setting the value of a property on a UI element (more specifically, an object that derives from DispatcherObject) must be done on the UI thread (more specifically, the thread on which the DispatcherObject subclass instance was created). For more info about this, see here.
It seems that all Guice's out-of-the-box Scope implementations are inherently Thread-based (or ignore Threads entirely):
Scopes.SINGLETON and Scopes.NO_SCOPE ignore Threads and are the edge cases: global scope and no scope.
ServletScopes.REQUEST and ServletScopes.SESSION ultimately depend on retrieving scoped objects from a ThreadLocal<Context>. The retrieved Context holds a reference to the HttpServletRequest that holds a reference to the scoped objects stored as named attributes (where name is derived from com.google.inject.Key).
Class SimpleScope from the custom scope Guice wiki also provides a per-Thread implementation using a ThreadLocal<Map<Key<?>, Object>> member variable.
With that preamble, my question is this: how does one go about creating a non-Thread-based Scope? It seems that something that I can use to look up a Map<Key<?>, Object> is missing, as the only things passed in to Scope.scope() are a Key<T> and a Provider<T>.
Thanks in advance for your time.
It's a bit unclear what you want - you don't want scopes that are based on threads, and you don't want scopes that ignore threads.
But yes, scopes are intended to manage the lifecycle of an object and say when an instance should be reused. So really you're asking "what are the other possibilities for re-using an instance beyond 'always use the same instance', 'never use the same instance', and 'use an instance depending on the execution environment of the current thread'?"
Here's what comes to mind:
Use the same instance for a fixed amount of time. The example here would be of a configuration file that's reloaded and reparsed every ten minutes.
Perform some network call to query whether a given object should be re-used (maybe it's a fast call to determine whether we need to reconstruct the object, but the call for reconstructing the object is slow)
Re-use the same object until some outside call comes in telling us to reload
Re-use the same object per thread, but not with a scope that's explicitly entered and left like the servlet scopes. (So one instance per thread)
A "this thread and child threads" scope that is based on an InheritableThreadLocal, not a plain ThreadLocal.
Related to that, a Scope and a threadpool-based ExecutorService that work togehter so that instances are shared between a thread and jobs it submits for background execution.
Pull instances out of a pool; this is tricky, since we'd need a good way to return objects to the pool when finished. (Maybe you could combine this idea with something like the request scope, so that objects can be returned to the pool when the request ends)
A scope that composes two or more other scopes, so for example we could get a configuration object that is re-read every 10 minutes except that the same instance is used through the lifetime of a given request.