RestKit automatically POST/PUT when back online

Question

Our app supports offline activity. Meaning we want to persist locally the creation of new core data objects as well as any modifications on existing objects. Then when the app goes online again we automatically push those changes (and any dependencies) up to the server.

I would think that RestKit would support such an operation, but currently when offline we store creations/modifications in a local cache. If I kill the app, those changes are not persisted. And also there is no attempt by RestKit to post those items to their originally intended endpoints.

I cannot find any documentation to support what we need here.

Is there a way for RestKit to do what we need?

If not, how do I get offline changes to persist to the disk (and not cache)? Then would it be appropriate to flag those as not uploaded to server, and then try uploading them when we are back online?

Any other important things I should consider?

Answer 1

At the time of writing RestKit does not support that feature.

To save to disk you need to call saveToPersistentStore: instead of just save: on the MOC.

You need to implement a scheme yourself, observing the 'online' status of the app and scanning the data store for things that need to be uploaded (which means maintaining a flag to indicate if it's happened yet).

Answer 2

I solved this issue by adding another field called 'updated' to my object. This field is set to true or 1 when the object is created or modified. Each time the application is started or synchronized, it iterates through the local core data copy and sends the objects with 'updated' set. On the web service, the response ALWAYS clears 'updated' to false when returning a response. This works well in the case where the web service and app are both online.