isabella232 / rncachingurlprotocol

Simple offline caching for UIWebView and other NSURLConnection clients

BACKGROUND

RNCachingURLProtocol is a simple shim for the HTTP protocol (that’s not nearly as scary as it sounds). Anytime a URL is downloaded, the response is cached to disk. Anytime a URL is requested, if we’re online then things proceed normally. If we’re offline, then we retrieve the cached version.

The point of RNCachingURLProtocol is mostly to demonstrate how this is done. The current implementation is extremely simple. In particular, it doesn’t worry about cleaning up the cache. The assumption is that you’re caching just a few simple things, like your “Latest News” page (which was the problem I was solving). It caches all HTTP traffic, so without some modifications, it’s not appropriate for an app that has a lot of HTTP connections (see MKNetworkKit for that). But if you need to cache some URLs and not others, that is easy to implement.

You should also look at AFCache for a more powerful caching engine that is currently integrating the ideas of RNCachingURLProtocol.

USAGE

1. To build, you will need the Reachability code from Apple (included). That requires that you link with SystemConfiguration.framework.

2. At some point early in the program (usually application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:), call the following:

   [NSURLProtocol registerClass:[RNCachingURLProtocol class]];

3. There is no step 3.

For more details see Drop-in offline caching for UIWebView (and NSURLProtocol).

EXAMPLE

See the CachedWebView project for example usage.

LICENSE

This code is licensed under the MIT License:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.