Best way to write to file a large HTTP response

Question

I'm looking for ways of writing to file the results of a web request. In languages based on the JVM or the CLR there are appropriate Stream-based techniques I'm familiar with, however I'm clueless on how could that be done in Objective-C. What I need is essentially a way to send an HTTP request (with a custom header set) and write the HTTP response content as I receive it (due to memory constraints I can't afford to get the whole file or even a large portion of it before persisting the contents).

Ideas/suggestions/snippets?

Thanks in advance!

PS: I'm developing for Mac OS and I'm already using ASIHTTPRequest, if that can be of help.

Edit: I should specify that I don't want to write all of the contents returned by the server to disk unless I can write them directly at a certain offset of a file (which I'll then be able to manipulate), so anything that dumps straight to a new file or to the beginning of a file won't work for me.

Answer 1

There a few ways of doing it, depends on how you want to handle the responds

ASIHTTPRequest *request = [ASIHTTPRequest requestWithURL:url];
[request setDownloadDestinationPath:@"/Users/Test/Desktop/cool.html"];

with setDownloadDestinationPath: set, it'll save into temporary path, and when it finished, it'll move it to your downloadDestinationPath you set.

Or you can implement request:didReceiveData: delegate (see ASIHTTPRequestDelegate.h), and handle it yourself. This is similar to stream.

PS. I only ever use ASIHTTPRequest on iOS, not Mac OS, so I'm not entirely sure if it will work for you.