Optimizing API Call Performance in an iOS App Using Alamofire with Caching Strategy
I'm dealing with I've been working on this all day and Quick question that's been bugging me - I'm working on a project and hit a roadblock....... Currently developing an iOS application that heavily relies on a third-party API for data retrieval. The response times are decent but not optimal, especially as the user base grows. I've integrated Alamofire for networking, but I'm finding that repeated calls for the same data are causing unnecessary latency. To mitigate this, I've attempted to implement a caching strategy, yet I’m not seeing the expected performance improvements. Here's a snippet of how I’ve set up my API request: ```swift import Alamofire func fetchData() { let url = "https://api.example.com/data" let cacheKey = "data_cache_key" if let cachedResponse = URLCache.shared.cachedResponse(for: URLRequest(url: URL(string: url)!)) { // Use cached response do { let jsonData = try JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: cachedResponse.data, options: []) print("Using cached data: \(jsonData)") } catch { print("Error parsing cached data: \(error)") } } else { // Fetch new data AF.request(url).responseJSON { response in switch response.result { case .success(let value): print("Fetched data: \(value)") let dataToCache = response.data! let cachedResponse = URLResponse(url: response.request!.url!, mimeType: "application/json", expectedContentLength: dataToCache.count, textEncodingName: nil) URLCache.shared.storeCachedResponse(URLResponse(data: dataToCache), for: cachedResponse) case .failure(let error): print("Request failed with error: \(error)") } } } } ``` In this setup, I first check for cached data before making an API call. However, performance benchmarks show that even with caching, the response times aren’t improving significantly, which leads me to believe my caching strategy might not be effective or I could be missing best practices. I’ve also tried using `URLSessionConfiguration` to adjust cache policies: ```swift let configuration = URLSessionConfiguration.default configuration.requestCachePolicy = .returnCacheDataElseLoad let session = Alamofire.Session(configuration: configuration) ``` Despite these efforts, I haven’t noticed a marked reduction in the number of API calls being made. Any suggestions on optimizing this further? Are there specific caching strategies or configurations you’d recommend for handling large datasets efficiently? Your insights would be greatly appreciated. Am I missing something obvious? For context: I'm using Swift on Linux. Thanks in advance! What am I doing wrong? This is part of a larger microservice I'm building.