AFNetworking is a delightful networking library for iOS and Mac OS X. It's built on top of NSURLConnection, NSOperation, and other familiar Foundation technologies. It has a modular architecture with well-designed, feature-rich APIs that are a joy to use. For example, here's how easy it is to get JSON from a URL:

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"https://alpha-api.app.net/stream/0/posts/stream/global"];
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
AFJSONRequestOperation *operation = [AFJSONRequestOperation JSONRequestOperationWithRequest:request success:^(NSURLRequest *request, NSHTTPURLResponse *response, id JSON) {
    NSLog(@"App.net Global Stream: %@", JSON);
} failure:nil];
[operation start];

Perhaps the most important feature of all, however, is the amazing community of developers who use and contribute to AFNetworking every day. AFNetworking powers some of the most popular and critically-acclaimed apps on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Choose AFNetworking for your next project, or migrate over your existing projects—you'll be happy you did!

How To Get Started

• Download AFNetworking and try out the included Mac and iPhone example apps
• Read the "Getting Started" guide, FAQ, or other articles in the wiki
• Check out the complete documentation for a comprehensive look at the APIs available in AFNetworking
• Watch the NSScreencast episode about AFNetworking for a quick introduction to how to use it in your application
• Questions? Stack Overflow is the best place to find answers

Overview

AFNetworking is architected to be as small and modular as possible, in order to make it simple to use and extend.

Core
AFURLConnectionOperation	An NSOperation that implements the NSURLConnection delegate methods.
HTTP Requests
AFHTTPRequestOperation	A subclass of AFURLConnectionOperation for requests using the HTTP or HTTPS protocols. It encapsulates the concept of acceptable status codes and content types, which determine the success or failure of a request.
AFJSONRequestOperation	A subclass of AFHTTPRequestOperation for downloading and working with JSON response data.
AFXMLRequestOperation	A subclass of AFHTTPRequestOperation for downloading and working with XML response data.
AFPropertyListRequestOperation	A subclass of AFHTTPRequestOperation for downloading and deserializing objects with property list response data.
HTTP Client
AFHTTPClient	Captures the common patterns of communicating with an web application over HTTP, including: <ul> <li>Making requests from relative paths of a base URL</li> <li>Setting HTTP headers to be added automatically to requests</li> <li>Authenticating requests with HTTP Basic credentials or an OAuth token</li> <li>Managing an <tt>NSOperationQueue</tt> for requests made by the client</li> <li>Generating query strings or HTTP bodies from an <tt>NSDictionary</tt></li> <li>Constructing multipart form requests</li> <li>Automatically parsing HTTP response data into its corresponding object representation</li> <li>Monitoring and responding to changes in network reachability</li> </ul> </td>
Images
AFImageRequestOperation	A subclass of AFHTTPRequestOperation for downloading and processing images.
UIImageView+AFNetworking	Adds methods to UIImageView for loading remote images asynchronously from a URL.

Example Usage

XML Request

NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.groups.browse&api_key=b6300e17ad3c506e706cb0072175d047&cat_id=34427469792%40N01&format=rest"]];
AFXMLRequestOperation *operation = [AFXMLRequestOperation XMLParserRequestOperationWithRequest:request success:^(NSURLRequest *request, NSHTTPURLResponse *response, NSXMLParser *XMLParser) {
  XMLParser.delegate = self;
  [XMLParser parse];
} failure:nil];
[operation start];

Image Request

UIImageView *imageView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, 100.0f, 100.0f)];
[imageView setImageWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://i.imgur.com/r4uwx.jpg"] placeholderImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"placeholder-avatar"]];

API Client Request

// AFAppDotNetAPIClient is a subclass of AFHTTPClient, which defines the base URL and default HTTP headers for NSURLRequests it creates
[[AFAppDotNetAPIClient sharedClient] getPath:@"stream/0/posts/stream/global" parameters:nil success:^(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, id JSON) {
    NSLog(@"App.net Global Stream: %@", JSON);
} failure:nil];

File Upload with Progress Callback

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://api-base-url.com"];
AFHTTPClient *httpClient = [[AFHTTPClient alloc] initWithBaseURL:url];
NSData *imageData = UIImageJPEGRepresentation([UIImage imageNamed:@"avatar.jpg"], 0.5);
NSMutableURLRequest *request = [httpClient multipartFormRequestWithMethod:@"POST" path:@"/upload" parameters:nil constructingBodyWithBlock: ^(id <AFMultipartFormData>formData) {
    [formData appendPartWithFileData:imageData name:@"avatar" fileName:@"avatar.jpg" mimeType:@"image/jpeg"];
}];

AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation = [[AFHTTPRequestOperation alloc] initWithRequest:request];
[operation setUploadProgressBlock:^(NSUInteger bytesWritten, long long totalBytesWritten, long long totalBytesExpectedToWrite) {
    NSLog(@"Sent %lld of %lld bytes", totalBytesWritten, totalBytesExpectedToWrite);
}];
[httpClient enqueueHTTPRequestOperation:operation];

Streaming Request

NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://localhost:8080/encode"]];

AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation = [[AFHTTPRequestOperation alloc] initWithRequest:request];
operation.inputStream = [NSInputStream inputStreamWithFileAtPath:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"large-image" ofType:@"tiff"]];
operation.outputStream = [NSOutputStream outputStreamToMemory];
[operation start];

Requirements

AFNetworking 1.0 and higher requires either iOS 5.0 and above, or Mac OS 10.7 (64-bit with modern Cocoa runtime) and above.

For compatibility with iOS 4.3, use the latest 0.10.x release.

ARC

AFNetworking uses ARC as of its 1.0 release.

If you are using AFNetworking 1.0 in your non-arc project, you will need to set a -fobjc-arc compiler flag on all of the AFNetworking source files. Conversely, if you are adding a pre-1.0 version of AFNetworking, you will need to set a -fno-objc-arc compiler flag.

To set a compiler flag in Xcode, go to your active target and select the "Build Phases" tab. Now select all AFNetworking source files, press Enter, insert -fobjc-arc or -fno-objc-arc and then "Done" to enable or disable ARC for AFNetworking.

Unit Tests

AFNetworking includes a suite of unit tests within the Tests subdirectory. In order to run the unit tests, you must install the testing dependencies via CocoaPods. To do so:

$ gem install cocoapods # If necessary
$ cd Tests
$ pod install

Once CocoaPods has finished the installation, you can execute the test suite via the 'iOS Tests' and 'OS X Tests' schemes within Xcode.

Test Logging

By default, the unit tests do not emit any output during execution. For debugging purposes, it can be useful to enable logging of the requests and responses. Logging support is provided by the AFHTTPRequestOperationLogger extension, which is installed via CocoaPods into the test targets. To enable logging, edit the test Scheme and add an environment variable named AFTestsLoggingEnabled with a value of YES.

Using xctool

If you wish to execute the tests from the command line or within a continuous integration environment, you will need to install xctool. The recommended installation method is Homebrew.

To install the commandline testing support via Homebrew:

$ brew update
$ brew install xctool --HEAD

Once xctool is installed, you can execute the suite via rake test.

Credits

AFNetworking was created by Scott Raymond and Mattt Thompson in the development of Gowalla for iPhone.

AFNetworking's logo was designed by Alan Defibaugh.

And most of all, thanks to AFNetworking's growing list of contributors.

Contact

Follow AFNetworking on Twitter (@AFNetworking)

Creators

Mattt Thompson @mattt

Scott Raymond @sco

License

AFNetworking is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.