AFNetworking 2.0 and use cache only when offline

Question

I have a problem when users use my app and they lost connection or use airplane mode.

My app server side doesn't set any cache policy and for the time being I can't change it. I migrated from AFNetworking 1.x to 2.0 and now I'm using AFHTTPRequestOperationManager when making requests. The problem is that because I have no cache policy on the server side, every request is made to the server (which for now is fine) but if the user is not able to connect to my server, it doesn't load the cached request.

So, I'm trying the following, using AFHTTPRequestOperation directly like this:

NSURL *URL = [NSURL URLWithString:filePath];
NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:URL] mutableCopy];
if (![[AFNetworkReachabilityManager sharedManager] isReachable]) {
    [request setCachePolicy:NSURLRequestReturnCacheDataElseLoad];
}
AFHTTPRequestOperation *op = [[AFHTTPRequestOperation alloc] initWithRequest:request];
[op setCompletionBlockWithSuccess:^(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, id responseObject) {

} failure:^(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, NSError *error) {

}];
[[NSOperationQueue mainQueue] addOperation:op];

This way, if AFNetworkReachabilityManager tells me there's no connectivity, I configured the cache policy for the request and it is loaded from the cache correctly.

The question is, is this the right approach to this situation?

Answer 1

You just need to subclass the AFHTTPSessionManager and check if the client is offline. Then you can change the cache policy or force the app to use cached data.