Hi

I would like to see if I can make a "search as you type" implementation, against a web service, that is optimized enough for it to run on an iPhone.

The idea is that the user starts typing a word; "Foo", after each new letter I wait XXX ms. to see if they type another letter, if they don't, I call the web service using the word as a parameter.

The web service call and the subsequent parsing of the result I would like to move to a different thread.

I have written a simple SearchWebService class, it has only one public method: - (void) searchFor:(NSString*) str;

This method tests if a search is already in progress (the user has had a XXX ms. delay in their typing) and subsequently stops that search and starts a new one. When a result is ready a delegate method is called:

- (NSArray*) resultsReady;

I can't figure out how to get this functionality 'threaded'. If I keep spawning new threads each time a user has a XXX ms. delay in the typing I end up in a bad spot with many threads, especially because I don't need any other search, but the last one. Instead of spawning threads continuously, I have tried keeping one thread running in the background all the time by:

- (void) keepRunning {

    NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
    SearchWebService *searchObj = [[SearchWebService alloc] init];
    [[NSRunLoop currentRunLoop] run]; //keeps it alive  
    [searchObj release];
    [pool release];
}

But I can't figure out how to access the "searchFor" method in the "searchObj" object, so the above code works and keeps running. I just can't message the searchObj or retrieve the resultReady objects?

Hope someone could point me in the right direction, threading is giving me grief:) Thank you.