Create Instance variables at runtime - objective-c

Question

I want to create instance variables dynamically at runtime, and I want to add these variables to a category. The number of the instance variables may change based on the configuration/properties file which I am using for defining them.
Any ideas??

Answer 1

Use Associative References - this is tricky, but that is the mechanism invented specifically for your use case.
Here is an example from the link above: first, you define a reference and add it to your object using objc_setAssociatedObject; then you can retrieve the value back by calling objc_getAssociatedObject.
static char overviewKey;
NSArray *array = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:# "One", #"Two", #"Three", nil];
NSString *overview = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:#"%#", #"First three numbers"];
objc_setAssociatedObject (
array,
&overviewKey,
overview,
OBJC_ASSOCIATION_RETAIN
);
[overview release];
NSString *associatedObject = (NSString *) objc_getAssociatedObject (array, &overviewKey);
NSLog(#"associatedObject: %#", associatedObject);
objc_setAssociatedObject (
array,
&overviewKey,
nil,
OBJC_ASSOCIATION_ASSIGN
);
[array release];

Answer 2

I'd be inclined to just use a NSMutableDictionary (see NSMutableDictionary Class Reference). Thus, you would have an ivar:
NSMutableDictionary *dictionary;
You'd then initialize it:
dictionary = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];
You can then save values to it dynamically in code, e.g.:
dictionary[#"name"] = #"Rob";
dictionary[#"age"] = #29;
// etc.
Or, if you are reading from a file and don't know what the names of the keys are going to be, you can do this programmatically, e.g.:
NSString *key = ... // your app will read the name of the field from the text file
id value = ... // your app will read the value of the field from the text file
dictionary[key] = value; // this saves that value for that key in the dictionary
And if you're using an older version of Xcode (before 4.5), the syntax is:
[dictionary setObject:value forKey:key];

Answer 3

Depends on exactly what you want to do, the question is vague but if you want to have several objects or several integers or so on, arrays are the way to go. Say you have a plist with a list of 100 numbers. You can do something sort of like this:
NSArray * array = [NSArray arrayWithContentsOfFile:filePath];
// filePath is the path to the plist file with all of the numbers stored in it as an array
That will give you an array of NSNumbers, you can then turn that into an array of just ints if you want like this;
int intArray [[array count]];
for (int i = 0; i < [array count]; i++) {
intArray[i] = [((NSNumber *)[array objectAtIndex:i]) intValue];
}
Whenever you want to get an integer from a certain position, lets say you want to look at the 5th integer, you would do this:
int myNewInt = intArray[4];
// intArray[0] is the first position so [4] would be the fifth
Just look into using a plist for pulling data, it will them be really easy to create arrays of custom objects or variables in your code by parsing the plist.