Download in background in iPhone

Question

Is it possible to download a file while the app is in background in iPhone 4?

Answer 1

Yes, it is.

You can do it yourself, or there's an (experimental) branch of ASIHTTPRequest that deals with some of it for you:

http://github.com/pokeb/asi-http-request/commits/backgroundtask

Answer 2

Under iOS 4.x, you can use request some background time using UIApplication beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler: and perhaps continue a file download for a limited period of time.

See Apple's document on "multitasking" background execution for details.