What is the most efficient way to move NSArray objects to UITextFields? - objective-c

Question

I have some code where there may or may not be objects in the Array... this is the code I am dealing with:
oServices1.text = CustomServicesArray[0];
oServices2.text = CustomServicesArray[1];
oServices3.text = CustomServicesArray[2];
oServices4.text = CustomServicesArray[3];
oServices5.text = CustomServicesArray[4];
oServices6.text = CustomServicesArray[5];
oServices7.text = CustomServicesArray[6];
oServices8.text = CustomServicesArray[7];
oServices9.text = CustomServicesArray[8];
oServices10.text = CustomServicesArray[9];
oServices11.text = CustomServicesArray[10];
oServices12.text = CustomServicesArray[11];
oServices13.text = CustomServicesArray[12];
oServices14.text = CustomServicesArray[13];
oServices15.text = CustomServicesArray[14];
oServices16.text = CustomServicesArray[15];
oServices17.text = CustomServicesArray[16];
oServices18.text = CustomServicesArray[17];
oServices19.text = CustomServicesArray[18];
oServices20.text = CustomServicesArray[19];
oServices21.text = CustomServicesArray[20];
oServices22.text = CustomServicesArray[21];
oServices23.text = CustomServicesArray[22];
Rather than check each and every array object for nil, is there a way I can take the oServices*xx*.text UIFields and put them into some kind of array so I can just use a loop?

Answer 1

Are you aware of reflexivity? With KVC you could save up much code and time:
for(int i=1; i<=23; i++) {
NSString* key= [NSString stringWithFormat: #"oServices%d"i];
// Remember that variables should start with a lowercase letter
[[self valueForKey: key] setText: customServicesArray[i-1] ];
}
But if you don't want to bind all these variables in your storyboard/xib file (even this may be too much), just set the tag of each text field in the order that you want (from 1), so that you can get them back using viewWithTag:
// From the UIViewController
for(int i=1; i<=23; i++) { // Consider defining a constant instead of 23
[[self.view viewWithTag: i] setText: customServicesArray[i-1] ];
}
I consider this last solution better because you avoid binding so many variables.

Answer 2

You can use an OutletCollection to hold oServices and loop on that. Note however that outlet collections are not sorted so you would need to sort them beforehand (on the tag criteria, or location for example).
For ordering see this question.

Answer 3

Set the tag property of the UITextFields to their corresponding ordinal in the array. The default value of tag is 0, so you may need to set the tag property to ordinal + 1 if there are other views in the parent view of your UITextFields. On the parent view of your text fields, you can use the viewWithTag: method to retrieve the appropriate UITextField.