Is there a way to set the same image to many UIimageViews? - objective-c

Question

I'm working with an image heavy iOS app and I found myself typing almost the same line again and again:
...
A016.image = [UIImage imageNamed:img21];
A017.image = [UIImage imageNamed:img21];
A018.image = [UIImage imageNamed:img21];
...
Now I ask you: is there a way where I could store the UIImageViews names in an Array or something?
Only to beautify my very ugly code.
/John

Answer 1

Yes, you can put the UIImageViews in an array and put it in a for.
UIImageView * imageView1;
UIImageView * imageView2;
UIImageView * imageView3;
NSArray * imageViewsArray = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:imageView1,imageView2,imageView3,nil];
for (UIImageView * currentImageView in imageViewsArray) {
currentImageView.image = [UIImage imageNamed:img21];
}

Answer 2

Of course you can simplify something like that. But it's not entirely clear what the context is exactly.
If you have all your image views in an array you could do something like this.
// Assume an NSArray called imageViews exists with all the UIImageView instances in it.
for (UIImageView *imageView in imageViews) {
imageView.image = [UIImage imageNamed:img21];
}
If your image views aren't in an array already and are actually called A016, A017 etc., then I'd recommend you change your code design. Something like this is never a good idea. It results in bad, difficult to maintain code. If this is some kind of table of images, try putting the image views in an array in the first place.
That being said, there are ways to put variables like that in an array. If they are declared as #properties or ivars you can could do something like this.
NSMutableArray *imageViews = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:20];
for (int i = 0; i < 20; i++) {
NSString *variableName = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"A0%d", i];
UIImageView *imageView = [self valueForKey:variableName];
[imageViews addObject:imageView];
}
After that you can save the array as an ivar and do the same thing as above.
A more hardcoded version would be to simply put the image views into an array yourself:
NSArray *imageViews = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:..., A016, A017, A018,..., nil];
But I really recommend not using indexed variable names like that.