NetworkHandler and NetworkHalpers

NetworkHandler was originally created to reduce boilerplate when using URLSession. With the advent of Async/Await in Swift 5.5, that's largely a non issue now. However, there are still some shortcomings of URLSession.

NetworkHalpers

Bring some type safety and convenience to constructing a URLRequest

NetworkHalpers may be used without NetworkHandler. However, NetworkHandler depends on NetworkHalpers.

• HTTPMethod
  • a string backed, extensible, but type safe implementation for HTTP methods with presets for common methods (GET, POST, etc)
• HTTPHeaderKey
  • a string backed, extensible, but type safe implementation for HTTP header keys with presets for common keys (Authorization, Content-Type, etc)
• HTTPHeaderValue
  • a string backed, extensible, but type safe implementation for HTTP header values with presets for some common Content-Types (image/jpeg, application/json, etc)
• MultipartFormInputStream
  • Allows convenient construction of a multipart form constructed via an InputStream for efficient form uploading.
• URLRequest
  • adds support for utilizing the above types
  • adds func encodeData<EncodableType: Encodable>(_ encodableType: EncodableType, encoder: NHEncoder? = nil) as a convenient way to encapsulate data for sending to servers. Uses URLRequest.defaultEncoder which can be either a JSONEncoder or PropertyListEncoder (or any other encoder you create and conform to NHEncoder)
  • adds func setContentType(_ contentType: HTTPHeaderValue) and func setAuthorization(_ value: HTTPHeaderValue) as convenient methods to set exceptionally common headers on requests
• URL
  • var urlRequest: URLRequest adds convenient creation of a URLRequest from a URL

NetworkHelper

Adds robust custom caching, progress tracking, control over how URLSessionTasks are constructed, and convenience for mocking on top of URLSession

1. Create and customize a NetworkRequest from a url url.request
   • in addition to all URLRequest properties and methods, you can additionally set the priority that a task will be created, provide a decoder for decoding a Decodable response, and provide the expected response code range to have an error automatcially thrown if the code is not within the range.
2. Optionally create an object conforming to NetworkHandlerTransferDelegate for progress and state tracking or if you otherwise want to be able to retrieve the associated URLSessionTask that is running behind the async method.
3. From an instance of NetworkHelper (or the default instance) initiate an async transfer via transferMahDatas or transferMahCodableDatas
4. ????
5. PROFIT

Installation:

1. Download and install
   • SPM (recommended)
     1. Add the line .package(url: "https://github.com/mredig/NetworkHandler.git", .upToNextMinor(from: "1.0.0")) to the appropriate section of your Package.swift
     2. The Package Name is NetworkHandler - add that as a dependency to any targets you want to use it in. swift package update or use Xcode
     3. Add import NetworkHandler to the top of any file you with to use it in
   • Brute Force Files
     • Alternatively, you could copy all the swift files in the Sources/NetworkHandler folder to your project, if you're masochistic.
2. Import to any files you want to use it in import NetworkHandler
3. Use it!

Compatibility

Everything should be compatible with all Apple platforms that support Swift 5.5 with Async/Await. However, while the previous version was theoretically cross compatible with Linux, this latest iteration is not. I started an attempt (which you can see on the linux-compatibility branch), but ultimately it was more involved than the time I had available to proceed with support. Right now, the main obstacle is KVO compatibility for progress tracking a download. If someone is abitious enough, you should be able to get progress information from the delegate's data loaded method and open a PR. A couple files also need FoundationNetworking imported conditionally for Linux.

To Do (contribution ideas)

• after every task, grab its metrics (URLSessionMetrics or something like that) to make an easy to use interface to see network quality
• it'd be nice to have a codable method return a value directly decoded instead of needing a tuple (might be a 3.0 feature)