Continuously update a UILabel in Swift - xcode

Question

I have a function, shown below, that I would like to continuously update. It is taking data from a webpage, and every so often that webpage is updated to reflect current information. Is there a way that I can catch this update and reflect that in my application? I'm pretty new to Swift and iOS programming. Some of the code made seem very bizarre, but it currently works for whatever song is playing when you first open the app (that is, it updates the text to show that song playing but doesn't update later).
let url = NSURL(string: "http://api.vicradio.org/songs/current")!
let request = NSMutableURLRequest(URL: url)
let session = NSURLSession.sharedSession()
let task = session.dataTaskWithRequest(request) { (data: NSData?, response: NSURLResponse?, error: NSError?) in
if error != nil {
return
}
let name = NSString(data: data!, encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding) as! String
var songName = ""
var artistName = "by "
var quoteNumber = 0
for character in name.characters {
if character == "\"" {
quoteNumber++
}
if quoteNumber == 3 && character != "\"" {
songName += String(character)
} else if quoteNumber == 7 && character != "\"" {
artistName += String(character)
}
}
if (songName != "no song metadata provided") {
self.SongNowText.text = songName
self.ArtistNowText.text = artistName
self.SongNowText.setNeedsDisplay()
self.ArtistNowText.setNeedsDisplay()
} else if (songName == "no song metadata provided") {
self.SongNowText.text = "The Best of What's Next!"
self.ArtistNowText.text = "only on VIC Radio"
}
}
task!.resume()

Answer 1

It looks like the URL you're accessing there is an API endpoint putting out JSON. I highly recommend using NSJSONSerialization.JSONObjectWithData to parse the response body into a dictionary and use that instead of rolling your own solution by counting quote marks.
The callback to dataTaskWithURL is executed on a background thread. Avoid updating the UI on anything besides the main thread because it can cause problems. Use dispatch_async to execute your UI update function on the main thread as in the example.
All you can do with this API is send it requests and read the responses. You can poll the endpoint at a regular interval while the app is open and get decent results from that. NSTimer is one way to do that, and it requires you put the method you want to execute repeatedly in a class inheriting from NSObject because it depends on Objective-C style message sending.
Throw this in a playground and try it:
import Cocoa
import XCPlayground
XCPSetExecutionShouldContinueIndefinitely()
class RadioDataAccessor : NSObject {
private let callback: [String : AnyObject] -> Void
init(callback: [String : AnyObject] -> Void) {
self.callback = callback
super.init()
NSTimer.scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval(5.0, target: self,
selector: "updateData", userInfo: nil, repeats: true)
// just so it happens quickly the first time
updateData()
}
func updateData() {
let session = NSURLSession.sharedSession()
let url = NSURL(string: "http://api.vicradio.org/songs/current")!
session.dataTaskWithURL(url) { data, response, error in
if error != nil {
return
}
var jsonError = NSErrorPointer()
let json = NSJSONSerialization.JSONObjectWithData(data,
options: NSJSONReadingOptions.allZeros,
error: jsonError) as? [String : AnyObject]
if jsonError != nil {
return
}
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue()) { self.callback(json!) }
}.resume()
}
}
RadioDataAccessor() { data in
println(data)
}
You may want to save the timer to a variable and expose a function that lets you invalidate it.