Does releasing a view controller releases all its properties? - objective-c

Question

I have a BaseViewController, which is a subclass of UITabBarController, and set up my views in this view controller.
-(void)setUpViews
{
FirstController *mainViewController = [[FirstController alloc] initAssignment:delegate.currentAssignment withMutableArray:myArray];
UINavigationController *firstNavController = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:mainViewController];
SecondController *secondViewController = [[SecondController alloc] initWithNibName:#"SecondController" bundle:nil];
UINavigationController *secondNavController = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:secondViewController];
self.viewControllers = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:firstNavController, secondNavController,nil];
firstNavController.tabBarItem.image = [UIImage imageNamed:#"blablabla.png"];
firstNavController.tabBarItem.title = #"Stream";
secondViewController.tabBarItem.image = [UIImage imageNamed:#"blabla.png"];
secondViewController.tabBarItem.title = #"Favourite";
}
Now I have another view controller, I call it ViewHandlerController, a subclass of BaseViewController. in my viewDidLoad in this viewHandler, i invoke setUpViews which is declared in BaseViewController. in the first screen of my app, when a Login button is pressed, I instantiate my ViewHandlerController, and presented my tabcontroller succesfully with nav controllers by using.
[[[UIApplication sharedApplication].windows objectAtIndex:0] addSubview:viewControllerHandler.view];
Inside my app. there is a logout button. I am using NSNotificationCenter to call my logoutMethod which is declared in my first screen. My question is, in this logoutMethod, how can I release the previously allocated objects to avoid memory pressure since the user can log in again (logIn - logOut -logIn)? since I'm using ARC, is setting my ViewController to NIL will do all the clean up?
EDIT: is removing my ViewControllerHandler from superview and setting it to nil helps releasing its subviews too?
Cheers

Answer 1

Well, answer for your question (not ARC) – no, basicaly view controller doesn't releases his properties when release. But you should nil your properties in viewDidUnload and (or) dealloc methods.
If you use ARC, you should notice that some actions can retain your controller, and it can never be deleted in some cases. Watch for methods, which takes object for delegate, they may not using weak references

Answer 2

Have a look at this Apple article about memory management.
You can just use autorelease in alloc methods or for (UIView *view in [self.view subviews]) {view release}; in dealloc.
In fact release is opposite operation to retain. When you do retain, you increase by 1 count of object instances in allocated memory. It happens when you call alloc, copy, new, mutableCopy. If you are using ARC you can't release objects, memory management is not your problem already.