iOS Should I have separate thread in ntework-intensive application?

[beachdog]

I am building an application which will have a TCP socket connection to a server, over which a large number of messages will be exchanged. Many of the messages will be pushed from the server, and will need to update the UI. I am wondering if in a very network-intensive application such as this, whether I should use NSThread to create a separate runloop in which to do my network message processing, in order to keep it separate from the main thread that is handling the UI updates and other things. I guess I'm wondering if the UI is going to get sluggish when I amd processing large incoming messages. I tried searching the docs for some guidance/best practices on when to create different threads but didn't find any. Any advice from those who might have done something similar would be appreciated. Thx in advance

 

[jnic]

Yes; run your connections in a separate thread, or connect asynchronously. Otherwise you'll find your UI locking up whilst the connection blocks.

To update the UI from another thread you'll need to call a method on the main thread from your connection, something like:

[self performSelectorOnMainThread:@selector(yourMethodThatUpdatesTheUI:)
withObject:yourObjectFromYourConnection waitUntilDone:NO];