In my quest to be the grandmaster of Objective C, I keep running into it's subtleties, which I want to share with ya'll and gain an understanding why
1) I have two init methods, the one that is inherited by NSObject for my Objective C class and one is a custom method that I create off my own, let's say
initCustomMethod:(int)par1 argument2:(int)par2;
My Aim is to call initCustomMethod through the provided init method, essentially
-(id)init{
return [self initCustomMethod:1 argument2:3];
}
Naturally, maintaining the order, I have init appearing before initCustomMethod in the .m file. Xcode warns me telling me that the initCustomMethod is not found, I go ahead and shuffle the order and have init appearing after initCustomMethod is declared and there is no such warning message anymore and everything is fine.
I concur that the order is important since it's essentially derived from C, however I am not sure of this. Because, i shuffled the order of some properties and their custom methods, with the properties #synthesize being declared after the custom setter method for a given property, but there was no such error replica.
Can anyone point out the malice here?
Thanks guys!!!
Very cool guys, thanks for helping me out with this. Also, since I have a custom init method, I am initializing the super in this method and using the original init method to call the custom init method.
Anything wrong with this?
Before you reference it anywhere, you should declare initCustomMethod:argument2 in your interface, which would usually be in your header file.
For example, you would usually have a .h file that looks like:
#interface MyClass
{
//instance variables
int anInstanceVariable;
}
// properties
#property (nonatomic, assign) int aProperty;
// methods
-(id)initCustomMethod:(int)par1 argument2:(int)par2;
#end
And if you did this, the order in which you define init and initCustomMethod:argument2: won't matter. This is because the declaration tells the compiler that you are going to define the method, and what it will look like, so it isn't confused when you use it later.
It's a bad idea in Objective-C to use a function or a method before it is either declared or defined. Putting initCustomMethod:argument2: before init means that the former is already defined in the latter. But if you'd just declare it in the header, it wouldn't matter which order they went in.
Add your custom method name in your header file - the compiler just goes through things in order. If you don't have a forward declaration, the compiler won't know what to do with that call. You're going to need to put it in the header if you want other parts of your program to be able to call it anyway.
Related
Is it possible to fields defined only in implementation but not in interface definition ?
#interface MyInterface .... #end --> dict not defined here!!!
#implementation MyInterface
...
NSDictionary *dict;
...
#end
In this case if somewhere I somehow accessed to this class, can I access to the dict or should I create a getter just like in Java ?
Edit after #Rob's answer
Thanks for the answer Rob, I wish I have the implementation of these interface and classes. Instead I am trying to bind two different libraries ( I know it is reallllly bad as architectural point of view but this is where I end up).
Basically, I am in react-native world. And we are using react-native-video as our player layer. But since AVPlayer does not support some subtitle types our head company sent us a library that needs a player instance and a view instance to draw subtitle on the view. I believe they will bind to events of the player and draw sub titles based on player states.
So react-native-video is in this github repo with the interface and implementation.
I find the UIView that includes the properties and casted it to the object itself RTCVideo in this case). But now I am stuck. I can go and change some stuff as per your suggestion in the "Development Pods" to be able to access but this is my last bullet :) I prefer to convince these two libraries in a friendly way :)
Yes, but the above syntax isn't what you want. The modern way to do this is with a class extension.
Your header file is the same:
#interface MyInterface
#end
But in your .m file, you create an extension by appending ():
#interface MyInterface ()
#property (nonatomic, readwrite) NSDictionary *dict;
#end
Now, inside your .m file, you can access self.dict normally, but outside of your .m file it won't appear available.
For full details, see Programming with Objective-C: Class Extensions Extend the Internal Implementation.
The syntax you've written actually creates a static (global) variable called dict that isn't tied to any instance.
It is possible to create raw instance variables using a {...} syntax, either on the extension or on the implementation, but this isn't used that often today, except for managing raw buffers that you don't want accessors for. The syntax is either:
#interface MyInterface () {
NSDictionary *_dict;
}
...
#end
or on the implementation:
#implementation MyInterface {
NSDictionary *_dict;
}
...
#end
But I recommend simple extensions with properties any time you can. And if you are considering creating an accessor for it, you definitely want to use #property and let the system do it for you.
If I understand your edits correctly, you're trying to read the internal ivars of an object that doesn't expose them with an accessor, correct? I believe specifically you want to access _player.
There's several common ways to do that. The key feature you want is Key-Value Coding.
The simplest approach for this problem is -valueForKey:
AVPlayer *player = [view valueForKey:#"player"];
The first thing -valueForKey: looks for is _<key>, and if it's just an object pointer (as in this case), it just returns it.
(This can be broken if a class return false for +accessInstanceVariablesDirectly, but the default is true, and it's unusual to override this.)
Another very common approach is to just declare any methods you know exist as a category. (This won't work for _player, since it's not a method, but in case you need similar things.) Imagine you wanted to call the "private" method -removePlayerTimeObserver. In your .m file, just say you know about it using a category:
#interface RCTVideo (PrivateMethods)
- (void)removePlayerTimeObserver;
#end
And since you know about it, you can call it:
[video removePlayerTimeObserver];
If you're wrong, and that method doesn't really exist, then the program will crash. In Objective-C, almost all rules are advisory. You can break them if you want to. ObjC programmers tend to be big rule-followers because otherwise the program crashes and ObjC has very clear rules that are pretty easy to follow. It's not because the system forces us to.
I have been unable to find any information on this topic and most of what I know about it has come by complete accident (and a few hours of trying to figure out why my code wasn't working). While learning objective-c most tutorials I have found make variables and properties with the same name. I don't understand the significance because it seems that the property does all the work and the variable just kind of sits there. For instance:
Test.h
#interface Test : NSObject {
int _timesPlayed, _highscore;
}
#property int timesPlayed, highscore;
// Methods and stuff
#end
Test.m
#implementation Test
#synthesize timesPlayed = _timesPlayed;
#synthesize highscore = _highscore;
// methods and stuff
#end
What I know
1) Okay so today I found out (after hours of confusion) that no matter how much changing you do to the properties highscore = 5091231 it won't change anything when you try to call [test highscore] as it will still be returning the value of _highscore which (I think) is the ivar that was set in test.h. So all changing of variables in test.m needs to be changing _highscore and not highscore. (Correct me if I'm wrong here please)
2) If I understand it correctly (I probably don't) the ivars set in test.h represent the actual memory where as the #properties are just ways to access that memory. So outside of the implementation I can't access _highscore without going through the property.
What I don't understand
Basically what I don't get about this situation is whether or not I need to use the ivars at all or if I can just use #property and #synthesize. It seems like the ivars are just extra code that don't really do anything but confuse me. Some of the most recent tuts I've seen don't seem to use ivars but then some do. So is this just a coding preference thing or is it actually important? I have tried searching through Apple's Documentation but I get rather lost in there and never seem to find what I'm looking for. Any guidance will be greatly appreciated.
You can think of the syntax for synthesizing properties as #synthesize propertyName = variableName.
This means that if you write #synthesize highscore = _highscore; a new ivar with the name _highscore will be created for you. So if you wanted to you could access the variable that the property is stored in directly by going to the _highscore variable.
Some background
Prior to some version of the compiler that I don't remember the synthesis statement didn't create the ivar. Instead it only said what variable it should use so you had to declare both the variable and the property. If you synthesized with a underscore prefix then your variable needed to have the same prefix. Now you don't have to create the variable yourself anymore, instead a variable with the variableName that you specified in the synthesis statement will be created (if you didn't already declare it yourself in which case it is just used as the backing variable of the property).
What your code is doing
You are explicitly creating one ivar called highscore when declaring the variable and then implicitly creating another ivar called _highscore when synthesizing the property. These are not the same variable so changing one of them changes nothing about the other.
Should you use variables or not?
This is really a question about preference.
Pro variables
Some people feel that the code becomes cleaner if you don't have to write self. all over the place. People also say that it is faster since it doesn't require a method call (though it is probably never ever going to have a measurable effect on your apps performance).
Pro properties
Changing the value of the property will call all the necessary KVO methods so that other classes can get notified when the value changes. By default access to properties is also atomic (cannot be accessed from more then one thread) so the property is safer to read and write to from multiple thread (this doesn't mean that the object that the property points to is thread safe, if it's an mutable array then multiple thread can still break things really bad, it will only prevent two threads from setting the property to different things).
You can just use #property and #synthesize without declaring the ivars, as you suggested. The problem above is that your #synthesize mapped the property name to a new ivar that is generated by the compiler. So, for all intents and purposes, your class definition is now:
#interface Test : NSObject {
int timesPlayed;
int highscore;
int _timesPlayed;
int _highscore;
}
...
#end
Assigning a value directly to the ivar timesPlayed will never show up if you access it via self.timesPlayed since you didn't modify the correct ivar.
You have several choices:
1 Remove the two ivars you declared in your original post and just let the #property / #synthesize dynamic duo do their thing.
2 Change your two ivars to be prefixed by an underscore '_'
3 Change your #synthesize statements to be:
#implemenation Test
#synthesize timesPlayed;
#synthesize highscore;
...
I typically just use #property and #synthenize.
#property gives the compiler and the user directions on how to use your property. weather it has a setter, what that setter is. What type of value it expects and returns. These instructions are then used by the autocomplete (and ultimately the code that will compile against the class) and by the #synthesize
#synthesize will by default create an instance variable with the same name as your property (this can get confusing)
I typically do the following
#synthesize propertyItem = _propertyItem;
this will by default create a getter and a setter and handle the autorelease as well as create the instance variable. The instance variable it uses is _propertyItem. if you want to access the instance variable you can use it as such.
_propertyItem = #"Blah";
this is a mistake tho. You should always use the getter and setter. this will let the app release and renew as needed.
self.propertyItem = #"Blah";
This is the better way to handle it. And the reason for using the = _propertyItem section of synthesize is so you cannot do the following.
propertyItem = #"Blah"; // this will not work.
it will recommend you replace it with _propertyItem. but you should use self.propertyItem instead.
I hope that information helps.
In your example, #synthesize timesPlayed = _timesPlayed; creates a new ivar called _timesPlayed and the property refers to that ivar. timesPlayed will be an entirely separate variable with no relation whatsoever to the property. If you just use #synthesize timesPlayed; then the property will refer to timesPlayed.
The purpose of the underscore convention is to make it easier to avoid accidentally assigning directly to an ivar when you want to be doing it through the property (i.e. through the synthesized setter method). However, you can still acces _timesPlayed directly if you really want to. Synthesizing a property simply auto-generates a getter and setter for the ivar.
In general you do not need to declare an ivar for a property, although there may be special cases where you would want to.
This may be an old question.. but in "modern times", #synthesize- is NOT necessary.
#interface SomeClass : NSObject
#property NSString * autoIvar;
#end
#implementation SomeClass
- (id) init { return self = super.init ? _autoIvar = #"YAY!", self : nil; }
#end
The _underscored backing ivar IS synthesized automatically... and is available within THIS class' implementation, directly (ie. without calling self / calling the automatically generated accessors).
You only need to synthesize it if you want to support subclass' ability to access the _backingIvar (without calling self), or for myriad other reasons, described elsewhere.
After importing the objective C robbiehanson/XMPPFramework into a swift project (setting up build setting, bridging header, etc). I am able to call normal methods in the imported classes and set properties directly.
However, certain instance methods that set properties cause immediate errors as if they don't exist in the instances I'm calling them on. For example:
- (void)setMyJID:(XMPPJID *)newMyJID
{
[self setMyJID_setByClient:newMyJID];
}
Or even the setMyJID_setByClient:newMyJID method which actually does the setting.
In two separate objective c example projects I have looked at, the setMyJID method is being called from other classes. However, while I am able to call other instance methods on the class, I can't call this one. Since I am not very familiar with objective c, I though this might be because it wasn't declared in the header file, causing some swift specific problem, but attempts to add a declaration for it did not help.
I am able to set the relevant property directly, but this is not only undesirable, I also would like to understand why I am not able to call certain methods.
I am attempting to make the call on an instance of the XMPPStream class like this
//This shows immediate error: XMPPStream does not have a member named 'setMyJID'
stream.setMyJID(XMPPJID.jidWithString(someXMPPAddress)
// This works perfectly
stream.myJID = (XMPPJID.jidWithString(someXMPPAddress))
Any help would be appreciated.
In the XMPPStream class, myJID is declared as follows:
#property (readwrite, copy) XMPPJID *myJID;
In Objective-C, this means that there are actually two methods on the XMPPStream class that conform to the following signatures:
- (XMPPJID *)myJID;
- (void)setMyJID:(XMPPJID *)myJID;
So, from Objective-C code, you can call them like any other method. However, as you know, you also have the option of using the syntactic sugar in the language known as "dot notation":
// getter with dot notation
XMPPJID *jid = stream.myJID;
// setter with dot notation
stream.myJID = jid;
However, in Objective-C, these dot notation expressions are directly translated into calls to the getter and setter. They're just there to look nice.
Things are different in Swift. When you have a property, like this one:
var myJID: XMPPJID
this does not mean that there exist separate getter and setter methods, like you might be imagining:
func myJID() -> XMPPJID {}
func setMyJID(jid: XMPPJID) {}
In Swift, you must access properties using dot syntax.
Knowing this, your problem becomes obvious. When you tried:
stream.setMyJID(XMPPJID.jidWithString(someXMPPAddress)
Swift tried to run the instance method setMyJID of stream, and found, rightly, that it did not exist! This, of course:
stream.myJID = (XMPPJID.jidWithString(someXMPPAddress))
works perfectly, because you're setting a property as Swift requires.
As an educational aside, you may sometimes see cases where, when accessing Objective-C properties from Swift, you not only can, but must use the getter and setter methods - dot notation won't even work! This seems totally counterintuitive, but there's a good reason for why this happens. One example of this that I can think of off the top of my head is the verbosely-named UIView property translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints, used for view layout. If you try to use it in Swift, like so:
// Set translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints to false on self
translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
you would get a compilation error! Specifically,
Cannot assign to 'translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints' in 'self'
Why? The answer lies in the UIView headers:
- (BOOL)translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints NS_AVAILABLE_IOS(6_0); // Default YES
- (void)setTranslatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints:(BOOL)flag NS_AVAILABLE_IOS(6_0);
It turns out that this "property," like many others in the Cocoa frameworks, is actually just a pair of methods that look like property accessors. Because of how Objective-C translates dot notation into method calls, you'd never notice before. Now, though, Swift is stricter – to get and set this "property," you must call the appropriate methods.
I have a class, BPGameEngine, with a readonly property, currCharacter. In the past, I had been assigning to the ivar directly (like _currCharacter = someCharacter;) inside BPGameEngine. In a subclass I found myself needing to write to this property, and therefore redeclared it in an anonymous category like so
#interface BPGameKitMPGameEngine()
#property (readwrite, assign) BPCharacterInstance* currCharacter;
#end
The compiler then had an error (which, bizarrely, I can't reproduce anymore, two days later), which alluded to needing an #synthesize statement, so I added #synthesize currCharacter = _currCharacter; in the subclass (BPGameKitMPEngine).
I did not add a similar anonymous category in the superclass, because I was just using the iVar directly. I then discovered that the line _currCharacter = someCharacter; which is inside a method of BPGameEngine called by BPGameKitMPEngine in a call to super ([super methodContainingAssignmentToCurCharIvar]) simply did nothing. _currCharacter showed up in the debugger, and someCharacter was not nil, but after the line was executed, _currCharacter remained nil. Bizarrely, adding a similar anonymous category in the subclass fixed the problem, as did removing the #synthesize (which no longer causes Xcode to complain of compiler errors).
The inconsistent requirement for an #synthesize seems like it must be a bug in Xcode, but the rest of this has me stumped. Can someone explain the problem with having the #synthesize in the subclass?
An auto synthesised instance variable backing a property is private to the class it is created in. Therefore you cannot (directly) extend a read-only property to read-write one in a subclass - there is no access to original instance variable.
You should get various errors, such as ones pointing out you cannot access a private instance variable from your superclass if you try this. It sounds like you may have managed to create two properties, each with their own backing variable, hence a change to one is not as a change to the other - but how you managed that in this case I've no idea.
Of course you can bypass the private access... the following should work:
#interface BPGameKitMPGameEngine ()
- (void) setCurrCharacter:(int)value;
#end
and:
- (void) setCurrCharacter:(BPCharacterInstance *)value
{
[self setValue:value forKey:#"_currCharacter"];
}
HTH
I'm not sure if I did understand you problem 100% but please do the following:
Create a new class extension file for BPGameKitMPGameEngine called Private.
Import that file (#import "BPGameKitMPGameEngine_Private.h") into BPGameKitMPGameEngine.m and BPGameKitMPEngine.m.
Remove the existing class extension code from BPGameKitMPGameEngine.
And now check if it works as you would expect.
The prequel for this question is here.
I have a class (A) and the class has category. In the category I've defined and implemented a method.
Now I am trying in (let's assume B) class to call [a someMethod]. My B class can't reach this method. Isn't possible to call the category meths from some other class?
You didn't show your code, but in the .m file that refers to the category method, you do need to import the header of the file that defines the category interface.
If you define a category in a .m file, you will not be able to call the category's methods from outside of that .m file.
Unfortunately, you did not provide enough information about your problem. Thus, all we can do is tell you how it should be done, and guess about why you are having trouble.
When you post a question, you should post all the relevant information. In this case, that would be the code that does not work.
Also, your statement
My B class can't reach this method.
means almost nothing. You get a compiler error, a runtime error, the syntax window does not show it, what exactly do you mean by that?
Now, when you implement a category on a class, you want to declare the category in a header (.h) file...
#interface Foo (BarExtensions)
- (NSString*)bar;
#end
and then, in the implementation (.m) file, provide the implementation for those methods.
#implementation Foo (BarExtensions)
- (NSString*)bar {
return #"FooBar";
}
#end
Of course, you should name things appropriately.
Also, make sure you include the .m file in the list of files that get built for your target.
If you do that, there's not much left to go wrong.