Handling redirects with initWithContentURL

Randy — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:00:03 +0000

I keep running into this problem so I thought that I should post my solution. There are some classes in the iPhone SDK like the MPMoviePlayerController that have an initWithContentURL method. However, the problem is that the URL I have is one that may issue a redirect response when requested. When I provide such a URL to initWithContentURL the player tells me that it cannot play me file. To work around this problem I wrote some very simple code.

The first thing you need to do is to build a HEAD request using NSMutableURLRequest. Then create an NSURLConnection settings the delegate as the current instance.

NSMutableURLRequest *headRequest = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:resourceURL cachePolicy:NSURLRequestUseProtocolCachePolicy timeoutInterval:60.0]; [headRequest setHTTPMethod:@"HEAD"]; connection = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:headRequest delegate:self];

Now we just need to implement the delegate method to play the URL from the response.

- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response { // Now we have resolved the URL so play the movie thePlayer = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] initWithContentURL:[response URL]]; [thePlayer play]; }

Obviously, this example handles one redirect but you can see that you can easily have it loop and until [response statusCode] == 200.

A Twofer » MPMoviePlayerController

Handling redirects with initWithContentURL