setAction: in NSViewController - objective-c

Question

It might be helpful to know that I come from a iOS background and that this is one of my first OS X projects.
In my project, I have a NSView subclass and a NSViewController and load the view in the controller.
- (void)loadView
{
StartView *view = [StartView alloc] initWithFrame:frame]; // frame exists
self.view = view;
}
The view has a NSButton-property btnNewthat I add in initWithFrame:.
- (id)initWithFrame:(NSRect)frame
{
self = [super initWithFrame:frame];
if (self) {
self.btnNew = [[NSButton alloc] initWithFrame:NSRectFromCGRect(CGRectMake(350, 180, 300, 60))];
[self addSubview:self.btnNew];
}
return self;
}
In loadView: I try to set the action and target.
- (void)loadView
{
StartView *view = [StartView alloc] initWithFrame:frame]; // frame exists
[view.btnNew setTarget:self];
[view.btnNew setAction:#selector(createNew:)];
self.view = view;
}
The createNew: function exists, off course.
However, when clicking the button, the app crashes. When I move the setTarget: and the setAction: into the view and perform them on self.btnNew, it works, but I think that's not how you should work with events and user interaction in a decent MVC-architecture.
The problem is with the self in [view.btnNew setTarget:self];, I guess. If I grab the target with view.btnNew.target, this is a nil object (0x000…000). Self exists & view.btnNew exists.
Am I doing something wrong? Or should I really listen to the click in the view and work with a delegate or a notification (I guess not?)

Answer 1

I found it out myself, with help from Niel Deckx.
The problem was ARC. The ViewController got dealloced before the click happened, which explains the NSObject does not respond to selector: the target doesn't exist anymore.
The easy solution is to have the ViewController as a (strong?) property where you create it.