CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ios
Ahmed Khedr
Ahmed Khedr

Reputation: 1073

Best practice for searching on a remote server from iOS app

There must be a better way to perform search on a remote server database than what I am doing right now.

I have a UISearchController installed on top of a table view that shows only 30 rows - Upon the user scrolling down to the bottom another 30 rows get loaded up and so forth...

So the the method I am using to perform the search looks like this:

func searchForWriter(searchString: String!) {
UIApplication.sharedApplication().networkActivityIndicatorVisible = true
Client.sharedInstance.searchForWriterByName(searchString) {(searchResults: [Writer]?, error: NSError?) -> Void in
    if let error = error {
        NSLog("Error: %@", error.description)
        dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue()) {
            UIApplication.sharedApplication().networkActivityIndicatorVisible = false
        }
    } else {
        dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue()) {
            self.filteredWriters = searchResults!

            // TODO: - This needs debugging to get the last searched string?
            print("searched for: \(searchString)")

            self.writersTableView.reloadData()
            UIApplication.sharedApplication().networkActivityIndicatorVisible = false
        }
    }
}

}

The UISearchResultsUpdating responds to any change in the searchBar and hence invoking the above searchForWriter method.

The problem is when the search results are obtained back from the server, there is no guarantee these will be for the last searched string?

In the matter of fact in almost most of the cases, this method will take longer time get results for a smaller search string rather a longer one... Hence giving completely frustrating search results

Upvotes: 0

Views: 197

Answers (1)

TheEye
TheEye

Reputation: 9346

In fact you ask several questions here:

1) What you are looking for concerning the amount of displayed rows is called pagination. Look it up for strategies how to do it, but in any case your server has to support it.

2) Concerning the search on each entered character: You should only start searching when at least n characters are entered (n being 3 or so), search results for only one character probably are useless anyway.

3) Add some timer constraint so that the search only starts when the user did not enter anything for 600 ms or so - this avoids lots of calls to the server for unnecessary intermediate results.

Upvotes: 1

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