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POiOS website interaction (NSURLConnection) design/pattern
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copied!<p>This is a question about how to design an app that interacts with a website.</p> <p>I have an app which queries a website for information, done with an asynchronous <code>NSURLConnection</code> (which I think is the preferred methode in iOS). The website in question does not have an api/web-service interface. Interaction is done like a browser would do, send request, receive answer, interpret the answer to determine next action. </p> <p>The site is also secured with a username and password and does. So when I want to interact with the website (let's say, usecases like: "get a list of photo's", "download photo", "upload photo") I need to login first and when I'm finished I'm logging out.</p> <p>I'd like to write my functions like this (but I'm very open to suggestions, perhaps I'm looking at it the wrong way)</p> <pre><code>login if login successful get list of photos logout </code></pre> <p>Then after when the user asks for it I'd like to</p> <pre><code>login if login successful download photo logout </code></pre> <p>The problem I'm running into is, every time you fire of an <code>NSURLConnection</code>, the reply is received in <code>-connectionDidFinishLoading</code>. So I need to keep some kind of state to know what to do next, was this login for getting the list of photos or was it a login to download a photo.</p> <p>Now, the problem is not that I cant get this to work, the problem is how to set something like this up cleanly and efficiently so that it can scale so that it can support 20+ or even 50+ usecases and still be easily maintainable. Stressing that not all usecases are as simple as the ones illustrated above.</p> <p>An example of what I'm trying to achieve is for instance the facebook app. That app also needs to login to facebook an support a whole range of usecases like posting an item, downloading posts, like a post, upload photos and numerous others. How have they designed something like this?</p>

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