### There's a lot to be said for a networking library that you can wrap your head around. API design matters, too. Code at its best is poetry, and should be designed to delight (but never surprise).
AFNetworking was lovingly crafted to make best use of our favorite parts of Apple's `Foundation` framework: `NSOperation` for managing multiple concurrent requests, `NSURLRequest`&`NSHTTPURLResponse` to encapsulate state, `NSCache`&`NSURLCache` for performant and compliant cacheing behavior, and blocks to keep request / response handling code in a single logical unit in code.
In order to demonstrate the power and flexibility of AFNetworking, we've included a small sample project, which asks for your current location and displays [Gowalla](http://gowalla.com/) spots nearby you. It uses `AFJSONRequestOperation` to load and parse the spots JSON, and a category on `UIImageView` to asynchronously load spot stamp images as you scroll.
* [iOS 4.0+](http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#releasenotes/General/WhatsNewIniPhoneOS/Articles/iPhoneOS4.html%23//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009559-SW1) - AFNetworking uses blocks, which were introduced in iOS 4.
* If you're using iOS 5, AFJSONRequestOperation uses JSON will use the built-in NSJSONSerialization class to parse JSON responses. If this is not available, it falls back on [JSONKit](https://github.com/johnezang/JSONKit).
* If you include `NSData+AFNetworking.h` in your project, you will need to link against `libz.dylib`. To do this in Xcode 4, go to your project file, select your active target, and go to the "Build Phases" tab. Under "Link Binary With Libraries", click the "+" icon on the bottom left, and select "libz.dylib" from the list of available libraries.
AFNetworking was created by [Scott Raymond](https://github.com/sco/) and [Mattt Thompson](https://github.com/mattt/) in the development of [Gowalla for iPhone](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gowalla/id304510106?mt=8).
[TTTLocationFormatter](), used in the example project, is part of [FormatterKit](https://github.com/mattt/FormatterKit), created by [Mattt Thompson](https://github.com/mattt/).