WKRefreshBackgroundTask for CloudKit on watchOS?

Question

So, on watchOS, I know you can schedule (and reschedule) a WKRefreshBackgroundTask to do work for you in the background. This is great for my app to make sure that data is current and up-to-date on watchOS - especially since it doesn't receive updates like iOS and macOS.

Except, my data uses CloudKit to store a user's data.

I want to use something like the URLSession scenario, where you schedule a WKApplicationRefreshBackgroundTask where you create a background URLSession task and hand it to the system. The system in turn hands you a WKURLSessionRefreshBackgroundTask where you check if your data completed its URLSession (by checking if the downloaded data exists).

My question is, how do you do something like this with CloudKit?

I could just do the downloading of my user's data in the WKApplicationRefreshBackgroundTask, but I don't think I'm guaranteed it will finish in the time the system gives to my app. This is why (it seems) Apple recommends you split this into two Background Tasks:

1. WKApplicationRefreshBackgroundTask - to create the URLSession and hand it to the system.
2. WKURLSessionRefreshBackgroundTask - to act upon the data downloaded from step 1.

I am not sure you can do this with CloudKit? Or, at least I can't seem to find something of the sort.

Answer 1

If you want to use WKURLSessionRefreshBackgroundTask you have to access the iCloud database via URLSession. This is possible from an app but much more complicated.

• iCloud web service documentation
• send a web request to iCloud from a swift app

Don't forget to get your API request token for your database on the iCloud dashboard if you want to try it out.