NSOperation and NSNotificationCenter on the main thread

Question

I have an NSOperation. When it is finished I fire a NSNotificationCenter to let the program know that the NSoperation is finished and to update the gui.

To my understanding listeners to the NSNotification will not run on the main thread because the NSOperation is not on the main thread.

How can I make it so that the listeners run on the main thread when I fire my event?

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotificationName:@"myEventName" object:self]; 

Answer 1

You can use performSelectorOnMainThread:withObject:waitUntilDone: with using a helper method, in a similar fashion to the following example.

.....
[self performSelectorOnMainThread:@selector(fireNotification) withObject:nil waitUntilDone:YES];
...

- (void)fireNotification {
  [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotificationName:@"myEventName" object:self]; 
}

If you don't wait until being done, you will need to consider the cases where other threads may refer to the object which could be already cleaned up before the main thread gets invoked.

Answer 2

Update: Dispatch queues make posting a notification on the main thread very easy.

dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(),^{
   [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotification...];
});

To wait for the notification handlers to finish, just replace dispatch_async with dispatch_sync.

---

Following notnoop's answer, here's some infrastructure you can use to safely post your notifications on the main thread without waiting for them to finish. Hopefully someone will find this helpful!

NSNotificationCenter+Utils.h:

@interface NSNotificationCenter (Utils)

-(void)postNotificationOnMainThread:(NSNotification *)notification;
-(void)postNotificationNameOnMainThread:(NSString *)aName object:(id)anObject;
-(void)postNotificationNameOnMainThread:(NSString *)aName object:(id)anObject userInfo:(NSDictionary *)aUserInfo;

@end

NSNotificationCenter+Utils.m:

@interface NSNotificationCenter (Utils_Impl) {
}

-(void)postNotificationOnMainThreadImpl:(NSNotification*)notification;
-(void)postNotificationNameOnMainThreadImpl:(NSString *)aName object:(id)anObject userInfo:(NSDictionary *)aUserInfo;

@end

@implementation NSNotificationCenter (Utils)

-(void)postNotificationOnMainThread:(NSNotification *)notification {
    [notification retain];
    [notification.object retain];
    [self performSelectorOnMainThread:@selector(postNotificationOnMainThreadImpl:) 
                           withObject:notification
                        waitUntilDone:NO];
}

-(void)postNotificationNameOnMainThread:(NSString *)aName object:(id)anObject {
    [self postNotificationNameOnMainThread:aName object:anObject userInfo:nil];
}

-(void)postNotificationNameOnMainThread:(NSString *)aName object:(id)anObject userInfo:(NSDictionary *)aUserInfo {
    [aName retain];
    [anObject retain];
    [aUserInfo retain];

    SEL sel = @selector(postNotificationNameOnMainThreadImpl:object:userInfo:);
    NSMethodSignature* sig = [self methodSignatureForSelector:sel];
    NSInvocation* invocation = [NSInvocation invocationWithMethodSignature:sig];
    [invocation setTarget:self];
    [invocation setSelector:sel];
    [invocation setArgument:&aName atIndex:2];
    [invocation setArgument:&anObject atIndex:3];
    [invocation setArgument:&aUserInfo atIndex:4];
    [invocation invokeOnMainThreadWaitUntilDone:NO];
}

@end

@implementation NSNotificationCenter (Utils_Impl)

-(void)postNotificationOnMainThreadImpl:(NSNotification*)notification {
    [self postNotification:notification];
    [notification.object release];
    [notification release];
}

-(void)postNotificationNameOnMainThreadImpl:(NSString *)aName object:(id)anObject userInfo:(NSDictionary *)aUserInfo {
    [self postNotificationName:aName object:anObject userInfo:aUserInfo];
    [aName release];
    [anObject release];
    [aUserInfo release];
}

@end

NSInvocation+Utils.h:

@interface NSInvocation (Utils)

-(void)invokeOnMainThreadWaitUntilDone:(BOOL)wait;

@end

NSInvocation+Utils.m:

@implementation NSInvocation (Utils)

-(void)invokeOnMainThreadWaitUntilDone:(BOOL)wait
{
    [self performSelectorOnMainThread:@selector(invoke)
                           withObject:nil
                        waitUntilDone:wait];
}

@end

Answer 3

If you're on 10.6, you can also use setCompletionBlock:. It's used like this:

NSOperation*op= .... ;
[op setCompletionBlock:^{
    dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(),^{
        code to be run on the main thread after the operation is finished.
    });
}];

For general introduction on blocks and GCD, this article was extremely helpful. I found GCD & setCompletionBlock easier to read than NSNotification. One caveat is, well, it only runs on 10.6!

Answer 4

To expand on Danra's answer here's the ARC compliant version of the category I put together:

NSNotificationCenter+Threads.h

@interface NSNotificationCenter (Threads)

-(void)postNotificationOnMainThread:(NSNotification *)notification;
-(void)postNotificationNameOnMainThread:(NSString *)name object:(id)object;
-(void)postNotificationNameOnMainThread:(NSString *)name object:(id)object userInfo:(NSDictionary *)userInfo;

@end

NSNotificationCenter+Threads.m

@implementation NSNotificationCenter (Threads)

-(void)postNotificationOnMainThread:(NSNotification *)notification
{
    [self performSelectorOnMainThread:@selector(postNotification:) withObject:notification waitUntilDone:NO];
}

-(void)postNotificationNameOnMainThread:(NSString *)name object:(id)object
{
    [self postNotificationNameOnMainThread:name object:object userInfo:nil];
}

-(void)postNotificationNameOnMainThread:(NSString *)name object:(id)object userInfo:(NSDictionary *)userInfo
{
    dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
        [self postNotificationName:name object:object userInfo:userInfo];
    });
}

@end