How to prevent a Command Line Tool from exiting before asynchronous operation completes

In a swift 2 command line tool (main.swift), I have the following:

import Foundation
print("yay")

var request = HTTPTask()
request.GET("http://www.stackoverflow.com", parameters: nil, completionHandler: {(response: HTTPResponse) in
    if let err = response.error {
        print("error: \(err.localizedDescription)")
        return //also notify app of failure as needed
    }
    if let data = response.responseObject as? NSData {
        let str = NSString(data: data, encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding)
        print("response: \(str)") //prints the HTML of the page
    }
})

The console shows 'yay' and then exits (Program ended with exit code: 0), seemingly without ever waiting for the request to complete. How would I prevent this from happening?

The code is using swiftHTTP

I think I might need an NSRunLoop but there is no swift example

Adding RunLoop.main.run() to the end of the file is one option. More info on another approach using a semaphore here

I realize this is an old question, but here is the solution I ended on. Using DispatchGroup.

let dispatchGroup = DispatchGroup()

for someItem in items {
    dispatchGroup.enter()
    doSomeAsyncWork(item: someItem) {
        dispatchGroup.leave()
    }
}

dispatchGroup.notify(queue: DispatchQueue.main) {
    exit(EXIT_SUCCESS)
}
dispatchMain()

You can call dispatchMain() at the end of main. That runs the GCD main queue dispatcher and never returns so it will prevent the main thread from exiting. Then you just need to explicitly call exit() to exit the application when you are ready (otherwise the command line app will hang).

import Foundation

let url = URL(string:"http://www.stackoverflow.com")!
let dataTask = URLSession.shared.dataTask(with:url) { (data, response, error) in
    // handle the network response
    print("data=\(data)")
    print("response=\(response)")
    print("error=\(error)")

    // explicitly exit the program after response is handled
    exit(EXIT_SUCCESS)
}
dataTask.resume()

// Run GCD main dispatcher, this function never returns, call exit() elsewhere to quit the program or it will hang
dispatchMain()

Don't depend on timing.. You should try this

let sema = DispatchSemaphore(value: 0)

let url = URL(string: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Cat_November_2010-1a.jpg")!

let task = URLSession.shared.dataTask(with: url) { data, response, error in
  print("after image is downloaded")

  // signals the process to continue
  sema.signal()
}

task.resume()

// sets the process to wait
sema.wait()

How to prevent a Command Line Tool from exiting before asynchronous operation completes

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