Is property getter called even if I access property by name? - objective-c

Question

Let's say that I declare property in following way:
#property(nonatomic, strong, getter = isWorking) BOOL working;
Then instead of having the property to be synthesized I write the getter myself (and add some custom logic to it).
What will happen if I access the property in following way:
BOOL work = self.working;
Is the getter (and my custom logic there) still called or is it called only when I access the property using getter explicitly (BOOL work = self.isWorking;) ?

Answer 1

Oops. Just tried it. Apparently i use dot notation too much, and didn't realize just how much it was doing. :P
#import "NSObject.h"
#include <stdio.h>
#interface Test : NSObject
#property (getter=myStuff) int stuff;
#end
#implementation Test
-(int)myStuff { return 42; }
-(void)setStuff:(int)value { /* don't care */ }
#end
int main() {
#autoreleasepool {
Test* test = [[Test alloc] init];
/* All these work... */
printf("test.stuff == %d\n", test.stuff);
printf("[test myStuff] == %d\n", [test myStuff]);
printf("test.myStuff == %d\n", test.myStuff);
/* but here, there's an exception */
printf("[test stuff] == %d\n", [test stuff]);
return 0;
}
}
When i compile this (using clang in Linux), there are two warnings about the oddness of a missing -(int)stuff. And the output looks like
chao#chao-VirtualBox:~/code/objc$ ./a.out
test.stuff == 42
[test myStuff] == 42
test.myStuff == 42
: Uncaught exception NSInvalidArgumentException, reason: -[Test stuff]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x2367f38
chao#chao-VirtualBox:~/code/objc$
So, umm, yeah. Disregard half of the stuff below. :P
self.working is just syntactic sugar for [self working] (or [self setWorking:value] if you're assigning to it). Either one will do the same thing: return the value of [self isWorking], because that's the getter you defined.
If you want to avoid the getter, try _working or self->_working (or whatever you named the ivar). Otherwise, self.working, [self working], and [self isWorking] (and even self.isWorking if you're feeling brave) should all give you the same result.