Memory allocation in detached NSThread to load an NSDictionary in background?
- by mobibob
I am trying to launch a background thread to retrieve XML data from a web service. I developed it synchronously - without threads, so I know that part works. Now I am ready to have a non-blocking service by spawning a thread to wait for the response and parse.
I created an NSAutoreleasePool inside the thread and release it at the end of the parsing. The code to spawn and the thread are as follows:
Spawn from main-loop code:
.
.
[NSThread detachNewThreadSelector:@selector(spawnRequestThread:)
toTarget:self withObject:url];
.
.
Thread (inside 'self'):
-(void) spawnRequestThread: (NSURL*) url {
NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
parser = [[NSXMLParser alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:url];
[self parseContentsOfResponse];
[parser release];
[pool release];
}
The method parseContentsOfResponse fills an NSMutableDictionary with the parsed document contents. I would like to avoid moving the data around a lot and allocate it back in the main-loop that spawned the thread rather than making a copy. First, is that possible, and if not, can I simply pass in an allocated pointer from the main thread and allocate with 'dictionaryWithDictionary' method? That just seems so inefficient.
Are there perferred designs?
