How to call two React Native native module methods at the same time? - objective-c

Question

Ok, this is a bit complicated. I can't link all of my code because it's huge, but I'll do my best to give some representative pseduo code in it's place.
I have an ios React Native project and in xcode I have embdeded a custom objective C framework in my project. To access that objective C framework I've created a Native Module that acts as a wrapper/bridge.
So far this has all worked great - essentially my user clicks on a button, which triggers the objective c framework via a native module, the objective c framework takes about 30 seconds to a minute to finish processing the user's selected data and then spits out the uri to a processed file.
The problem I've run into is that my users are confused as to whether or not my app is frozen. As it happens the main function of my framework uses a for loop, so I decided to add two properies to the framework's main class and add a function that returns the properties so we can see the progress. It looks like this:
#implementation MyFramework {
int currentBlock;
int allBlocks;
}
- (NSArray<NSString*>*)processFile:(NSString *)file
{
int totalBlocks = examineFile(file);
for( int iBlock= 0; iBlock<totalBlocks; iBlock++) {
currentBlock = iBlock;
//other code that actually does stuff to the file goes here
}
//code that stitches the blocks together and generates files goes here
NSArray* files = #[filePath1, filePath2, filepath3];
return files;
}
- (NSArray<NSString*>*)getProgress:(NSString *)msg
{
int* pCurrentBlock = &currentBlock;
int* pAllBlocks = &allBlocks;
NSString* currentBlockString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%d", *pCurrentBlock];
NSString* allBlocksString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%d", *pAllBlocks];
NSArray* progressArray = #[currentBlockString, allBlocksString];
return progressArray;
}
Back in Javascript I call a Native Module wrapper for the above code. So when the user clicks a button I trigger a Native Module method called getFiles() which in turn calls the processFile() method in Objective C code above.
Now, while the processFile() method is running I simultaneously kick off a setInterval() every 2 seconds that calls a second Native Module method called status() which calls the getProgress() function shown above. The big problem I have is that getProgress() will not return a result while processFile() is running. Instead it waits until processFile() method has finished and then it returns around 20 results all at once.
So instead of getting updates like this:
['1','37']
['2','37']
['3','37']
['4','37']
['5','37']
I get something like this all at the end
['36','37']
['36','37']
['36','37']
['36','37']
['36','37']
Here's my Native Module code
const MyFramework *myLocalFramework = [[MyFramework alloc]init];
RCT_EXPORT_MODULE();
RCT_EXPORT_METHOD(getFiles:(NSString *)path
resolver:(RCTPromiseResolveBlock)resolve
rejecter:(RCTPromiseRejectBlock)reject)
{
NSString *modelFilePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:#"converted_model_float16" ofType:#"tflite"];
NSArray * files = [myLocalFramework localFile:path tfModel:modelFilePath];
if (files) {
resolve(files);
} else {
reject(#"event_failure", #"no event id returned", nil);
}
}
RCT_EXPORT_METHOD(status:(NSString *)path
resolver:(RCTPromiseResolveBlock)resolve
rejecter:(RCTPromiseRejectBlock)reject)
{
NSString* hi = #"hi";
NSArray* percentages = [myLocalFramework getProgress:hi];
if (percentages) {
resolve(percentages);
} else {
reject(#"event_failure", #"no event id returned", nil);
}
}
So with all that said, if anyone has any ideas for how I can get the Native Module to run the status() method without waiting for getFiles() to finish first, I would love your input!