Forgive me this iOS only question, but I really do...

# ios

[Stefan Oltmann]

Forgive me this iOS only question, but I really don't find the correct solution. 🙈

How can I make that my SwiftUI task runs on the background?
task is always on the main thread.
Task.detached starts a new task on another thread.
The problem is Task.detached() runs to completion even is task is cancelled because the cancellation is not propagated.

Can some expert please enlight me how to correctly do that?

.task {

      Task.detached {

        guard image == nil else { return }

        image = await imageLoader.loadThumbnailImage(photoUri: photo.uri)
      }
    }

[hfhbd]

By reading the docs only:
What about

.task(priority: .background) {
    Task {
    }
}

[Stefan Oltmann]

That still runs on the main actor unfortunately.

[Stefan Oltmann]

It would be so nice if these Tasks would do it like coroutines and automaticly propagate cancellation

[hfhbd]

I thought, they do. But Task.detached is GlobalScope, which doesn't inherit cancelation too:

suspend fun a() {
     while (true) {
        delay(1.seconds)
        println("Still running")
    }
}
    
@OptIn(DelicateCoroutinesApi::class)
@Test
fun b(): Unit = runBlocking {
    withTimeout(5.seconds) {
        GlobalScope.launch {
            a()
        }
    }
    delay(10.seconds)
}

[Stefan Oltmann]

Yeah, I'm so confused. Apple changes API all the time and a lot of solutions for that are outdated. 🤷‍♂️

[Stefan Oltmann]

If I could just set the opposite of the MainActor annotation to my imageLoader call. That would be great.

[Stefan Oltmann]

Is there any withContext() equivalent in Swift?

[hfhbd]

not similar, but this works: `actor`:

import SwiftUI

struct ContentView: View {
    let a = A()
    
    var body: some View {
        Text("Hello, world!")
            .padding()
            .task(priority: .background) {
                print("Start Thread")
                await a.a()
            }
    }
}


actor A {
    func a() async {
        Task {
            print("Start Sleeping")
            try await Task.sleep(nanoseconds: 50_000_000_000)
        }
    }
}

[hfhbd]

message has been deleted

[Stefan Oltmann]

Thank you. 🙏

I guess I need to look up again the whole "actor" mechanics. 😅
Changing my ImageLoaderImpl from "class" to "actor" according to your sample does the trick.

[hfhbd]

Keep in mind, `actor`s handles async calls sequentiell!

[Stefan Oltmann]

So no concurrent image loadings at the same time?

[Stefan Oltmann]

I improved performance now because if you scroll very fast trough my photo gallery tasks for images that are no more visible do not needed to be loaded. That's why task cancellation is very important here.

[Stefan Oltmann]

Yes, ok. Bringing everything to the same actor is indeed another problem. 😅

[Stefan Oltmann]

Wow, Apple really made this hard

[Stefan Oltmann]

Ok, I hacked this... If you call a kotlin suspend function (you must be on the main thread for that because the others are not supported) when this comes back from "await" you are on an random background thread... then you can do stuff in parallel... until you call a method marked as MainActor to bring you back.

[Stefan Oltmann]

🙈

[Stefan Oltmann]

Let's talk no further about this and let me thank you again, Phillip ❤️

[hfhbd]

Nice 😄