Background Realm

Background Realm is a collection of handy classes and extensions that make it easier to work with RealmSwift in the background.

It's main focus is to enhance existing Realms and Realm-based code bases with very little overhead and refactoring.

Note: Although this module makes it more convenient to work with a Realm in the background, it does not make Realms nor its objects thread-safe. They should still be accessed only from within their appropriate thread.

Specs

• RealmSwift 10.0.0+
• iOS 12+
• tvOS 12+
• watchOS 4+
• macOS 10.12+
• Swift 5.0+

Objective-C

For the Objective-C counterpart, see BLBackgroundRealm.

Writing to a Realm in the background

Performing write transactions in the background becomes as easy as:

Realm.writeInBackground(configuration: <#T##Realm.Configuration?#>) { (result) in
    <#code#>
}

Optionally, you can set a default backgroundConfiguration that will be used in all write transactions in the background:

Realm.Configuration.backgroundConfiguration = <#T##Realm.Configuration?#>

Realm.writeInBackground { (result) in
    <#code#>
}

Finally, you can easily move from any Realm instance to its background counterpart:

let realm = try Realm()

realm.writeInBackground { (result) in 
    <#code#>
}

Commiting to a Realm in the background

Similarly to write operations, you can commit transactinos to a Realm in the background. The difference being that commits can be cancelled:

Realm.commitInBackground(configuration: <#T##Realm.Configuration?#>) { (result) -> Bool in
    <#code#>
    return false //return true if you want to cancel this write operation
}

You can also move from any Realm instance to its background counterpart:

let realm = try Realm()

realm.commitInBackground { (result) -> Bool in 
    <#code#>
    return false //return true if you want to cancel this write operation
}

The BackgroundRealm

Background Realm exposes a BackgroundRealm class, which basically:

1. creates a private Thread and RunLoop where a new background Realm will be opened
2. opens a Realm in the private thread
3. runs work in the background thread

This is particularly useful if you'd like to:

• make computationally expensive changes to the Realm
• register for change notifications in the background, without necessarily triggering a UI update right away

Usage

• Creating a BackgroundRealm using Realm.Configuration.backgroundConfiguration:

let backgroundRealm = BackgroundRealm { (result) in
    <#code#>
}

• Creating a BackgroundRealm using a custom configuration:

let backgroundRealm = BackgroundRealm(configuration: <#T##Realm.Configuration?#>) { (result) in
    <#code#>
}

• Creating a BackgroundRealm using a file URL:

let backgroundRealm = BackgroundRealm(fileURL: <#T##URL#>) { (result) in
    <#code#>
}

Queues

BackgroundRealm uses two queues to process things in the background:

• DispatchQueue.backgroundRealm
• OperationQueue.backgroundRealm

If you'd like to use your own queues, just set those as early as possible in you app's life cycle.

Installation

Cocoapods

pod 'BackgroundRealm', '~> 3.0'

Then import BackgroundRealm where needed.

Carthage

github "BellAppLab/BackgroundRealm" ~> 3.0

Then import BackgroundRealm where needed.

Swift Package Manager

.package(url: "https://github.com/BellAppLab/BackgroundRealm.git", from: "3.0.0")

Git Submodules

cd toYourProjectsFolder
git submodule add -b submodule --name BackgroundRealm https://github.com/BellAppLab/BackgroundRealm.git

Then drag the BackgroundRealm folder into your Xcode project.

Author

Bell App Lab, [email protected]

Contributing

Check this out.

Credits

Logo image by mikicon from The Noun Project

License

BackgroundRealm is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.