CocoaDev

I got tired of having to build NSInvocation wrappers using the handleInvocation trick as seen in ThreadCommunication. What follows is an implementation for a trivial TrampolineObject that will automatically bounce any message it gets to the main thread.

#import “NSObject+Invocations.h”

////////// @interface EGPerformOnMainThreadTrampoline : NSProxy { id object; BOOL waitUntilDone; }

-(id)initWithObject:(id)inobject waitUntilDone:(BOOL)wait; @end

@implementation EGPerformOnMainThreadTrampoline

-(id)initWithObject:(id)inobject waitUntilDone:(BOOL)wait { object = [inobject retain]; waitUntilDone = wait;

return self; }

-(void)dealloc { [object release]; [super dealloc]; }

• (void)forwardInvocation:(NSInvocation *)anInvocation { [anInvocation retainArguments]; [anInvocation performSelectorOnMainThread:@selector(invokeWithTarget:) withObject:object waitUntilDone:waitUntilDone]; }

-(NSMethodSignature*)methodSignatureForSelector:(SEL)aSelector { return [object methodSignatureForSelector:aSelector]; }

@end

@implementation NSObject (PerformOnMainThreadTrampoline)

-(NSProxy*)performOnMainThreadWaitUntilDone:(BOOL)wait { return [[[EGPerformOnMainThreadTrampoline alloc] initWithObject:self waitUntilDone:wait] autorelease]; }

@end

@interface NSObject (PerformOnMainThreadTrampoline) -(NSProxy*)performOnMainThreadWaitUntilDone:(BOOL)wait; @end

You can then send messages like this:

object performOnMainThreadWaitUntilDone:NO] this:is a:complex message:0.5f];

Any comments or improvements would be welcome. You can use this code for anything without restriction, but it’d be nice if you’d credit the original author ([[ElliotGlaysher).

Also see the implementation of UKKMainThreadProxy from his UKKQueueWatcher distribution. It’s basically the same idea, a transparent category on NSObject that allows you to send any message you want to a given object on the main thread.

JKP