On Coalescing Calls

Doug Russell writes about using performSelector:withObject:afterDelay: to coalesce multiple calls into one.

I’ve done similar coalescing, but by using an NSTimer. I haven’t gone to the trouble of writing a category for this (but I should). Here’s what I do:

1. Create a method like scheduleReloadData.

2. In that method, I create a timer that fires soon (like in .2 seconds). If a timer already exists, I invalidate it and release it.

3. When the timer fires, it calls a method like reloadTimerDidFire:(NSTimer *)timer. In that method I get rid of the timer and actually call reloadData.

I think my method would coalesce calls over a longer period than Doug’s method — but at a cost, of course. (Latency, for one thing.)

This reminds me of another form of coalescing I’ve used a little bit, but that doesn’t seem to be common (as far as I can tell): NSNotificationQueue.

You can coalesce multiple notifications into one, and choose how they’re coalesced (end of the run loop or until the run loop is idle).

I haven’t found NSNotificationQueue to be massively useful — but it’s occasionally useful. File under Cocoa nooks and crannies.

Update a few minutes later: I totally missed Doug’s note at the end about using an interval greater than 0.0 to coalesce calls over a longer period. That should do the trick to replace my timer-based method.