Proper use of beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler

The accepted answer is very helpful and should be fine in most cases, however two things bothered me about it:

1. As a number of people have noted, storing the task identifier as a property means that it can be overwritten if the method is called multiple times, leading to a task that will never be gracefully ended until forced to end by the OS at the time expiration.

2. This pattern requires a unique property for every call to beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler which seems cumbersome if you have a larger app with lots of network methods.

To solve these issues, I wrote a singleton that takes care of all the plumbing and tracks active tasks in a dictionary. No properties needed to keep track of task identifiers. Seems to work well. Usage is simplified to:

//start the task
NSUInteger taskKey = [[BackgroundTaskManager sharedTasks] beginTask];

//do stuff

//end the task
[[BackgroundTaskManager sharedTasks] endTaskWithKey:taskKey];

Optionally, if you want to provide a completion block that does something beyond ending the task (which is built in) you can call:

NSUInteger taskKey = [[BackgroundTaskManager sharedTasks] beginTaskWithCompletionHandler:^{
    //do stuff
}];

Relevant source code available below (singleton stuff excluded for brevity). Comments/feedback welcome.

- (id)init
{
    self = [super init];
    if (self) {

        [self setTaskKeyCounter:0];
        [self setDictTaskIdentifiers:[NSMutableDictionary dictionary]];
        [self setDictTaskCompletionBlocks:[NSMutableDictionary dictionary]];

    }
    return self;
}

- (NSUInteger)beginTask
{
    return [self beginTaskWithCompletionHandler:nil];
}

- (NSUInteger)beginTaskWithCompletionHandler:(CompletionBlock)_completion;
{
    //read the counter and increment it
    NSUInteger taskKey;
    @synchronized(self) {

        taskKey = self.taskKeyCounter;
        self.taskKeyCounter++;

    }

    //tell the OS to start a task that should continue in the background if needed
    NSUInteger taskId = [[UIApplication sharedApplication] beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler:^{
        [self endTaskWithKey:taskKey];
    }];

    //add this task identifier to the active task dictionary
    [self.dictTaskIdentifiers setObject:[NSNumber numberWithUnsignedLong:taskId] forKey:[NSNumber numberWithUnsignedLong:taskKey]];

    //store the completion block (if any)
    if (_completion) [self.dictTaskCompletionBlocks setObject:_completion forKey:[NSNumber numberWithUnsignedLong:taskKey]];

    //return the dictionary key
    return taskKey;
}

- (void)endTaskWithKey:(NSUInteger)_key
{
    @synchronized(self.dictTaskCompletionBlocks) {

        //see if this task has a completion block
        CompletionBlock completion = [self.dictTaskCompletionBlocks objectForKey:[NSNumber numberWithUnsignedLong:_key]];
        if (completion) {

            //run the completion block and remove it from the completion block dictionary
            completion();
            [self.dictTaskCompletionBlocks removeObjectForKey:[NSNumber numberWithUnsignedLong:_key]];

        }

    }

    @synchronized(self.dictTaskIdentifiers) {

        //see if this task has been ended yet
        NSNumber *taskId = [self.dictTaskIdentifiers objectForKey:[NSNumber numberWithUnsignedLong:_key]];
        if (taskId) {

            //end the task and remove it from the active task dictionary
            [[UIApplication sharedApplication] endBackgroundTask:[taskId unsignedLongValue]];
            [self.dictTaskIdentifiers removeObjectForKey:[NSNumber numberWithUnsignedLong:_key]];

        }

    }
}

If you want your network transaction to continue in the background, then you'll need to wrap it in a background task. It's also very important that you call endBackgroundTask when you're finished - otherwise the app will be killed after its allotted time has expired.

Mine tend look something like this:

- (void) doUpdate 
{
    dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, 0), ^{

        [self beginBackgroundUpdateTask];

        NSURLResponse * response = nil;
        NSError  * error = nil;
        NSData * responseData = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest: request returningResponse: &response error: &error];

        // Do something with the result

        [self endBackgroundUpdateTask];
    });
}
- (void) beginBackgroundUpdateTask
{
    self.backgroundUpdateTask = [[UIApplication sharedApplication] beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler:^{
        [self endBackgroundUpdateTask];
    }];
}

- (void) endBackgroundUpdateTask
{
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] endBackgroundTask: self.backgroundUpdateTask];
    self.backgroundUpdateTask = UIBackgroundTaskInvalid;
}

I have a UIBackgroundTaskIdentifier property for each background task

---

Equivalent code in Swift

func doUpdate () {

    dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, 0), {

        let taskID = beginBackgroundUpdateTask()

        var response: URLResponse?, error: NSError?, request: NSURLRequest?

        let data = NSURLConnection.sendSynchronousRequest(request, returningResponse: &response, error: &error)

        // Do something with the result

        endBackgroundUpdateTask(taskID)

        })
}

func beginBackgroundUpdateTask() -> UIBackgroundTaskIdentifier {
    return UIApplication.shared.beginBackgroundTask(expirationHandler: ({}))
}

func endBackgroundUpdateTask(taskID: UIBackgroundTaskIdentifier) {
    UIApplication.shared.endBackgroundTask(taskID)
}