by Bart Jacobs3 Feb 2014

In the previous installments of this series, we‘ve taken a close look at the NSURLSession API introduced in iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks. Networking on iOS and OS X has become much simpler and more flexible thanks to the NSURLSession API. Does this mean that you should stop using AFNetworking for your networking needs? And what about AFNetworking 2.0, which was introduced a few months ago? In this final installment, I will tell you about AFNetworking 2.0 and how it compares to the NSURLSession API.

在之前的一系列教程当中，我们已经仔细的分析了 NSURLSession 的 API，他是 iOS 7 以及 OS X 新引入的处理网络链接的方法。如今，处理网络越来越简单，小白都能轻易上手了，这得益于 NSURLSession 的帮助哦，亲。虽然小白都能整明白网络是怎么回事，是否意味着不需要使用开源库 AFNetworking 了呢？ AFNetworking 2.0 到底有着怎样的特性呢？在这最后的一期教程当中，哥来引领你们，进行 AFNetworking 2.0 与 NSURLSession 之间的纵深比较。

Introduction （介绍）

By all accounts, AFNetworking is about as mainstream as it gets.

As Mattt Thompson points out on NSHipster, AFNetworking has become the de facto networking library for Cocoa applications. At the time of writing, the library has surpassed 10,000 stars on GitHub and was forked close to 3,000 times.

If you‘re new to AFNetworking and would like to read more about its history and features, then I suggest to read Mattt‘s post about AFNetworking 2.0 on NSHipster. In this article, I‘d like to focus on two aspects, what is new in AFNetworking 2.0 and how does it compare to the NSURLSession API . The question you should be asking yourself is "Should I still be using AFNetworking with NSURLSession in my toolbox?" That‘s the question I plan to answer in this article.

不管怎样，AFNetworking 都是一个传说。

正如 Mattt Thompson 在 NSHipster 上指出的，AFNetworking 实际上已经成为了 Cocoa 应用中不可或缺的一个开源库。当下还在不停的维护着，这个开源库已经获得了超过10,000人的支持，被fork了将近3,000多次。

如果，你还没听过 AFNetworking （哥真的鄙视你-_-!!），想了解一下他发展的历史以及一些牛逼的特性，这样的话，哥建议你读一下 Mattt 的博文 AFNetworking 2.0 on NSHipster 。  在今天你看的这篇博文中，我将重点聚焦在两个方面，AFNetworking 2.0 有哪些新的特性，它与 NSURLSession API 之间到底有啥区别。你应该问一下你自己：“我是否还要用 AFNetworking 配合 NSRULSession 来处理网络呢？”那就是哥要回到你的问题。

Requirements（一些条件）

Before we take a closer look at what AFNetworking 2.0 has to offer, it‘s important to know about the library‘s new requirements. It shouldn‘t be a surprise that the requirements of AFNetworking 2.0 are stricter than those of AFNetworking 1.x. As its version number indicates, AFNetworking includes breaking changes, which are the result of its new architecture. This also means that migrating a project from AFNetworking 1.x to 2.0 should be done with caution. The migration guide is the ideal place to start if you plan on migrating a project to AFNetworking 2.0.

AFNetworking no longer supports iOS 4.3 and 5. The minimum deployment targets for iOS and OS X are iOS 6 and OS X 10.8 respectively. AFNetworking 2.0 also requires Xcode 5. If you‘re still using Xcode 4, this may be a good time to make the transition to Xcode 5.

在我们进一步了解 AFNetworking 2.0 之前，知道这个开源库有着怎样的新的环境要求非常重要。正如他的版本号标示的那样子，AFNetworking 2.0 比 AFNetworking 1.x 有着更严格的限制条件，它有着许多全新的架构级的改变，和以前已经面目全非了。也就是说，你不要手贱把以前的 AFNetworking 1.x 的项目升级到 AFNetworking 2.0，否则会出现很多的警告，如果你确实想升级一下，恩，migration guide 这个指南应该是你的菜。

Solid Foundation

AFURLConnectionOperation

As many of you probably know, AFNetworking is built on top of NSURLConnection and NSOperation, which has proven to be a powerful and elegant combination. The result of this combination is AFURLConnectionOperation, an NSOperation subclass that manages an NSURLConnection instance and implements the NSURLConnectionDelegate protocol. Even though this robust foundation remains unchanged in AFNetworking 2.0, it is supplemented by the NSURLSession API, which I‘ll cover in more detail later.

Separation of Responsibilities

In AFNetworking 1.x, the AFHTTPRequestOperation class was in charge of request and response serialization and validation. This is no longer true in AFNetworking 2.0. The AFHTTPRequestOperation class and its subclasses are no longer directly responsible for serializing and validating requests and responses. This responsibility has been moved to the AFURLRequestSerialization and AFURLResponseSerialization protocols. Each protocol declares a single delegate method to handle request and response serialization and validation respectively.

To make your life easier, however, AFNetworking 2.0 ships with AFHTTPRequestSerializer and AFHTTPResponseSerializer as well as a number of subclasses for common content types, such as JSON and XML. To see how this works in practice, let‘s take a look at an example in which I query the Forecast API. This doesn‘t look all that different from how you made a request with AFNetworking 1.x. The main difference is that you‘ll be using the AFHTTPRequestOperation class more often. The AFJSONRequestOperation and AFXMLRequestOperation classes are no longer present in AFNetworking 2.0.

The AFJSONResponseSerializer class inherits from AFHTTPResponseSerializer and should be used for JSON responses. If you need to process XML responses, then AFXMLNResponseSerializer will help you out. For other content types, you need to subclass AFHTTPResponseSerializer.

AFHTTPRequestOperationManager

Another major change in AFNetworking 2.0 is the removal of the AFHTTPClient class, which was in charge of talking to web services. The responsibilities of AFHTTPClient have been split up into a number of classes and protocols. To talk to a web service, you now use AFHTTPRequestOperationManager and AFHTTPSessionManager. Just like AFHTTPRequestOperation, AFHTTPRequestOperationManager and AFHTTPSessionManager delegate serialization of requests and responses to separate objects. Both AFHTTPRequestOperationManager and AFHTTPSessionManager have a requestSerializer and responseSerializer property for this purpose. Let‘s revisit the above example to see how this works in practice.

What About NSURLSession?

AFURLSessionManager

The key question when discussing AFNetworking 2.0 in the light of the NSURLSession API is whether we still need AFNetworking. AFNetworking adds a number of convenience classes and methods to the NSURLSession API and this is only possible thanks to the separation of responsibilities I discussed earlier. The most significant improvement that AFNetworking provides on top of the NSURLSession API are the AFURLSessionManager and AFHTTPSessionManager classes.

The AFURLSessionManager helps you manage an NSURLSession object. Even though I love the NSURLSession API, I have to agree with Mattt that its API is incomplete. The AFURLSessionManager class adds a number of convenience methods that make the NSURLSession API even better. Serialization and validation, for example, are much easier and intuitive with AFNetworking. Just like the AFHTTPRequestOperationManager, instances of AFURLSessionManager have a requestSerializer and responseSerializer property that makes serialization of requests and responses seamless and intuitive.

I hope you can see the benefit of using AFNetworking in combination with the NSURLSession API. It makes working with the NSURLSession API much more intuitive especially if you‘re already used to the way AFNetworking 2.0 separates serialization and validation from the actual task or request operation.

AFHTTPSessionManager

AFNetworking 2.0 also incudes a subclass of AFURLSessionManager, AFHTTPSessionManager, which makes interacting with web services a breeze. The AFHTTPSessionManager class includes a number of conveniences methods, such as GET:parameters:success:failure: and POST:parameters:constructingBodyWithBlock:success:failure: that make the migration process from AFHTTPClient to AFHTTPSessionManager easy. Similar methods are also available in the AFHTTPRequestOperationManager class, which I discussed earlier.

Reachability

Reachability is managed by the AFURLRequestOperationManager and AFURLSessionManager classes. When instances of these classes have a valid baseURL, then a reachability manager is automatically instantiated and set up. Of course, it is also possible to explicitly create an instance of the AFNetworkReachabilityManager class.

Icing On The Cake

AFNetworking 2.0 has a number of other features, such as built-in support for SSL pinning and various categories on UIKit classes. Take a look at this example in which I leverage AFNetworking‘s category on UIProgressView to update a progress view while downloading a remote image.

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// Initialize Request NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://cdn.tutsplus.com/mobile/uploads/2014/01/5a3f1-sample.jpg"]];   // Initialize Session Manager self.sessionManager = [[AFURLSessionManager alloc] initWithSessionConfiguration:[NSURLSessionConfiguration defaultSessionConfiguration]];   // Initialize Download Task NSURLSessionDownloadTask *downloadTask = [self.sessionManager downloadTaskWithRequest:request progress:nil destination:^NSURL *(NSURL *targetPath, NSURLResponse *response) {     // Handle Success   } completionHandler:^(NSURLResponse *response, NSURL *filePath, NSError *error) {     // Handle Failure }];   [self.progressView setProgressWithDownloadProgressOfTask:downloadTask animated:YES];   [downloadTask resume];

 

Verdict

If your project doesn‘t rely on networking, then you won‘t need all the power and convenience that AFNetworking has to offer. As a matter of fact, I think it‘s important that every iOS or OS X developer is familiar with NSURLSession and NSURLConnection, because they are key components of the platform.

Even though the NSURLSession API is great and easy to use, the networking APIs provided by the Foundation framework aren‘t perfect. As Mattt points out, even the NSURLSession API has a few notable gaps. AFNetworking tries to elegantly fill these gaps. The combination of the NSURLSession API and AFNetworking is a marriage made in heaven. It truly is a joy to use.

I really like the NSURLSession API and I hope I‘ve convinced you of its power in this series. However, this doesn‘t mean that AFNetworking has become obsolete. In my opinion, AFNetworking is the perfect companion of the NSURLSession API. AFNetworking has matured and it is indeed the best and most robust networking library available. Its modular architecture means that you don‘t need to include every class or category it has to offer. You are free to pick and choose from the components that it includes. AFNetworking supports CocoaPods subspecs, which make this process trivial.

Conclusion

I couldn‘t be more happy with the second major release of AFNetworking. The library‘s modularity and separation of responsibilities is what makes it shine in my opinion. It complements the NSURLSession API so well that you won‘t even notice that you‘re using AFNetworking. Mattt Thompson and the more than 130 contributors of AFNetworking have done a formidable job. It‘s good to be a Cocoa developer.