Wanted: Up-to-date example for JSON/POST with basic auth using AFNetworking-2

Question

I have a toy app which submits an https JSON/POST using basic auth security. I've been told I should consider using AFNetworking. I've been able to install AFNetwork-2 into my XCode project (ios7 target, XCode5) just fine. But none of the examples out there seem to be relevant to current versions of AFNetworking-2, but rather previous versions. The AFNetworking docs are pretty sparse, so I'm struggling how to put the pieces together. The non-AFNetworking code looks something like:

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"https://xxx.yyy.zzz.aaa:bbbbb/twig_monikers"];
NSMutableURLRequest *request = [NSMutableURLRequest
    requestWithURL:url
    cachePolicy: NSURLRequestUseProtocolCachePolicy
    timeoutInterval: 10.0];

NSData *requestData = [NSJSONSerialization dataWithJSONObject: [self jsonDict] options: 0 error: nil];
[request setHTTPMethod: @"POST"];
[request setValue: @"application/json" forHTTPHeaderField: @"Accept"];
[request setValue: @"application/json" forHTTPHeaderField: @"Content-Type"];
[request setValue:[NSString stringWithFormat: @"%d", [requestData length]] forHTTPHeaderField: @"Content-Length"];
NSData *plainPassText = [@"app_pseudouser:sample_password" dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSString *base64PassText = [plainPassText base64EncodedStringWithOptions: NSDataBase64Encoding76CharacterLineLength];
[request setValue:[NSString stringWithFormat: @"Basic %@", base64PassText] forHTTPHeaderField: @"Authorization"];

FailedCertificateDelegate *fcd=[[FailedCertificateDelegate alloc] init];
NSURLConnection *c=[[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:fcd startImmediately:NO];
[c setDelegateQueue:[[NSOperationQueue alloc] init]];
[c start];
NSData *data=[fcd getData];

if (data)
    NSLog(@"Submit response data: %@", [NSString stringWithUTF8String:[data bytes]]);

I'm not looking for someone to write my code for me. I just can't seem to figure out how to map the AFNetworking-2 parts over to that. Any links, or examples, or explanations much welcome.

UPDATE 1

The above is a non AF version that is known to work. Moving trying to get it all in one go, I just tried:

AFHTTPRequestOperationManager *manager = [AFHTTPRequestOperationManager manager];
manager.requestSerializer = [AFJSONRequestSerializer serializer];
[manager.requestSerializer
    setAuthorizationHeaderFieldWithUsername:@"app_pseudouser"
    password:@"sample_password"];
AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation =
[manager
    PUT: @"https://172.16.214.214:44321/twig_monikers"
    parameters: [self jsonDict]
    success:^(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, id responseObject){
        NSLog(@"Submit response data: %@", responseObject);}
    failure:^(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, NSError *error){
        NSLog(@"Error: %@", error);}
];

Which produces the following error:

2013-10-09 11:41:38.558 TwigTag[1403:60b] Error: Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1012 "The operation couldn’t be completed. (NSURLErrorDomain error -1012.)" UserInfo=0x1662c1e0 {NSErrorFailingURLKey=https://172.16.214.214:44321/twig_monikers, NSErrorFailingURLStringKey=https://172.16.214.214:44321/twig_monikers}

Watching on the server side, nothing ever makes it through. I don't know if it is because the https, or what, but I can flip the app back to the original code, and it gets through just fine.

Answer 1

UPDATE: The JSON portion of the following was found to work for PUT/POST, but NOT for GET/HEAD/DELETE

After some wrangling, and help outside SO, I got something working, which I wanted to leave as a memento. In the end, I was really very impressed with AFNetworking-2. It was so simple, I kept trying to make it harder than it should have been. Given a jsonDict method that returns the json packet to send, I created the following:

- (void) submitAuthenticatedRest_PUT
{
    // it all starts with a manager
    AFHTTPRequestOperationManager *manager = [AFHTTPRequestOperationManager manager];
    // in my case, I'm in prototype mode, I own the network being used currently,
    // so I can use a self generated cert key, and the following line allows me to use that
    manager.securityPolicy.allowInvalidCertificates = YES;
    // Make sure we a JSON serialization policy, not sure what the default is
    manager.requestSerializer = [AFJSONRequestSerializer serializer];
    // No matter the serializer, they all inherit a battery of header setting APIs
    // Here we do Basic Auth, never do this outside of HTTPS
    [manager.requestSerializer
        setAuthorizationHeaderFieldWithUsername:@"basic_auth_username"
        password:@"basic_auth_password"];
    // Now we can just PUT it to our target URL (note the https).
    // This will return immediately, when the transaction has finished,
    // one of either the success or failure blocks will fire
    [manager
        PUT: @"https://101.202.303.404:5555/rest/path"
        parameters: [self jsonDict]
        success:^(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, id responseObject){
            NSLog(@"Submit response data: %@", responseObject);} // success callback block
        failure:^(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, NSError *error){
            NSLog(@"Error: %@", error);} // failure callback block
    ];
}

3 setup statements, followed by 2 message sends, it really is that easy.

EDIT/ADDED: Here's an example @jsonDict implementation:

- (NSMutableDictionary*) jsonDict
{
    NSMutableDictionary *result = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
    result[@"serial_id"] = self.serialID;
    result[@"latitude"] = [NSNumber numberWithDouble: self.location.latitude];
    result[@"longitude"] = [NSNumber numberWithDouble: self.location.longitude];
    result[@"name"] = self.name;
    if ([self hasPhoto])
    {
        result[@"photo-jpeg"] = [UIImageJPEGRepresentation(self.photo, 0.5)
            base64EncodedStringWithOptions: NSDataBase64Encoding76CharacterLineLength];
}
return result;

}

It should just return a dictionary with string keys, and simple objects as values (NSNumber, NSString, NSArray (I think), etc). The JSON encoder does the rest for you.