dispatch_async without using a block

Question

I want to use dispatch_async to occasionally pull a changing resource from my web server (about every 60 seconds).

I want to make use of dispatch_async but I want to give it a function name instead. Since I want that function to sleep and redo the same thing again.

This is what I am trying to do dispatch_async(self.downloadQueue, @selector(getDataThread:)); (this does not compile)

I think a while loop is not a good idea so I'm wondering what was the best approach for this

Answer 1

How about something like...

NSTimer *timer = [NSTimer timerWithTimeInterval:60 target:self selector:@selector(getDataThread:) userInfo:nil repeats:YES];
[[NSRunLoop mainRunLoop] addTimer:timer forMode:NSDefaultRunLoopMode];

- (void)getDataThread:(id)foo {
    dispatch_async(self.downloadQueue, ^{
       // code you want to run asynchronously
    });
}

It seems you want some block of code to run asynchronously... but you want that to also run at a timed interval, so I think this should suffice.

If you want to ditch blocks and dispatch_async altogether you could look at NSOperationQueue, keeping in mind NSOperationQueue is built on GCD but you don't need to worry about interfacing with it directly.