NSURLSession Connection Leak
What it doesn’t tell you is that if you don’t invalidate the session (via finishTasksAndInvalidate or invalidateAndCancel), then the internet connection created by the session remains open until the app terminates, even after the delegate method URLSession:task:didCompleteWithError: has been called, and even after the app’s code no longer has a strong reference to the session. It’s more than just a potential memory leak.
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NSURLSessionAPI seems peculiar, because you would expectURLSession:task:didCompleteWithError:to be, you know, the end. Shouldn’t you be able to freely (pun intended) dispose of the connection at that point? The reality, however, is that you need to invalidate every used session.
Even if you don’t invalidate the session, the connection will eventually close, but only after some timeout period has elapsed.