Getting Started with AFNetworking

This is a guide to help developers get up to speed with AFNetworking. It is geared primarily towards anyone who is new to Mac or iOS development, or has not worked extensively with 3rd-party libraries before.

These step-by-step instructions are written for Xcode 5, using either the iOS 7 SDK. If you are using a previous version of Xcode, you may want to update before starting.

Step 1: Download CocoaPods

CocoaPods is a dependency manager for Objective-C, which automates and simplifies the process of using 3rd-party libraries like AFNetworking in your projects.

CocoaPods is distributed as a ruby gem, and is installed by running the following commands in Terminal.app:

$ sudo gem install cocoapods
$ pod setup

Depending on your Ruby installation, you may not have to run as sudo to install the cocoapods gem.

Step 2: Create a Podfile

Project dependencies to be managed by CocoaPods are specified in a file called Podfile. Create this file in the same directory as your Xcode project (.xcodeproj) file:

$ touch Podfile
$ open -e Podfile

TextEdit should open up showing an empty file. You just created the pod file and opened it! Ready to add some content to the empty pod file?

Copy and paste the following lines into the TextEdit window:

platform :ios, '7.0'
pod 'AFNetworking', '~> 2.0'

Step 3: Install Dependencies

Now you can install the dependencies in your project:

$ pod install

From now on, be sure to always open the generated Xcode workspace (.xcworkspace) instead of the project file when building your project:

$ open App.xcworkspace

Step 4: Dive In!

At this point, everything's in place for you to start using AFNetworking. Just #import the headers for the classes you need and get to it!

Next Steps

You can find even more articles like this one on the wiki. You'll also want to keep a link to the documentation handy while you're working on your app.