Sometimes, when developing an iOS application, we need to do something like ‘displaying a spinner’, and right after that, do a tedious task, such as query’ing a database, sorting a file, or hitting a backend.
As you may (or may not know)… all of the UIKit framework works on the Main Thread (with several exceptions, set aside). A common problem we might encounter is that… if you begin a long process after initializing an ActivityIndicatorView, the main thread will remain locked out, and thus… the spinner will never begin.
The easiest solution i could come up with looks something like this:
[cc lang=”objc”]
[_spinner startAnimating];
…
[self performSelector:@selector(doSomething:) withObject:someObject afterDelay:0.1f];
…
[/cc]
What’s this??. Simple!. We’re scheduling the ‘doSomething’ selector, in the current runloop, to be executed after 0.1 seconds. That ‘leaves room’ for the mainThread to initialize the spinner (which, internally, will spawn another thread).
That way your app won’t get a nasty freeze … and the spinner will keep on rocking!