This is a problem which has been bugging me for a while now. I'm still pretty new with some of these patterns so you'll have to forgive me (and correct me) if I use any of the terms incorrectly.
My Methodology
I've created a game engine. All of the objects in my game engine use inversion of control to get dependencies. These dependencies all implement protocols and are never accessed directly in the project, other than during the bootstrapping phase. In order to get these objects, I have the concept of a service locator. The service locator's job is to locate an object which conforms to a specific protocol and return it. It's a lot like a factory, but it should handle the dependencies as well.
In order to provide the services to the service locator, I have what I call service specifiers. The service locator knows about all of the service specifiers in the project, and when an object is requested, attempts to get an instance of an object conforming to the provided protocol from each of them. This object is then returned to the caller. What's cool about this set up is the service specifier also knows about a service locator, so if it has any dependencies, it just asks the service locator for those specific dependencies.
To give an example, I have an object called HighScoreManager. HighScoreManager implements the PHighScoreManager protocol. At any time if an instance of PHighScoreManager is required, it can be retrieved by calling:
id<PHighScoreManager> highScoreManager = [ServiceLocator resolve: #protocol(PHighScoreManager)];
Thus, inversion of control. However, most of the time it isn't even necessary to do this, because most classes are located in a service specifier, if one required PHighScoreManager as a dependency, then it is retrieved through the service locator. Thus, I have a nice flat approach to inversion of control.
My Problem
Because I want the code from my game engine to be shared, I have it compiled as a static library. This works awesome for everything else, but seems to get a little tricky with the service locator. The problem is some services change on a game to game basis. In my above example, a score in one game might be a time and in another it might be points. Thus, HighScoreManager depends on an instance of PHighScoreCreator, which tells it how to create a PScore objecct.
In order to provide PHighScoreCreator to HighScoreManager, I need to have a service specifier for my game. The only way I could think of to accomplish this was to use the Cocoa version of reflections. After digging around, I found out classes were discoverable through NSBundle, but it seems there's no way to get the current bundle. Thus, if I want to be able to search out my service specifiers, I would have to compile my game logic into its own bundle, and then have the engine search out this bundle and load it. In order to do this I'd have to create a third project to house both the engine code and the game logic bundle, when in reality I'd like to just have a game project which used the engine static library.
My Real Question
So after all of that, my question is
Is there a better way to do what I'm trying to accomplish in Cocoa Touch, or
Is there a way to discover classes which conform to my service specifier protocol from the main bundle?
Thanks for the help and taking the time to read the question.
-helixed
Have a look at:
+[NSBundle mainBundle];
+[NSBundle bundleForClass:];
+[NSBundle bundleWithIdentifier:];
+[NSBundle allBundles];
+[NSBundle allFrameworks];
These allow you to interact programmatically with the various bundles at runtime. Once you have a bundle to work with there are a number of strategies you could employ to find the specific class(es) you are looking for. For example:
Retrieve the bundle identifier — this will be an NSString like #"com.example.GameEngineClient".
Transform it into a legal Objective-C class name by stripping everything before the last dot, or replacing all the dots with underscores, or whatever, and then appending a predefined protocol name. Your protocol from above, for instance, might result in a string like #"GameEngineClient_PHighScoreManager".
Get the bundle's designated class for your protocol using NSClassFromString().
Now you can create an instance of the class provided by the bundle author, that implements whatever protocol you have specified.
The Objective-C runtime is a beautiful thing!
Sounds like you need to use the functions of the Objective-C runtime. First you can get a list of all available classes via objc_getClassList. Then you can iterate over all the classes and check if they conform to your protocol with class_conformsToProtocol. You shouldn’t use +conformsToProtocol: messages here, since there are classes in the runtime that don’t support this selector.
Related
I want to customize the application toolbar to my own needs. A long time ago I played around (and did some impressive customizations) with the AbstractPresentationFactory.
However this extension point was removed and replaced with nothingness. (The documentation states its replacement is org.eclipse.e4.ui.css.swt.theme, but that extension point is useless without proper documentation.)
I debugged my application to the point of finding the interface ICoolBarManager, and lo and behold, the JavaDoc says:
This interface is internal to the framework; it should not be implemented outside the framework. This package provides a concrete cool bar manager implementation, CoolBarManager, which clients may instantiate or subclass.
Which means I can replace the implementation of ICoolBarManager somehow (why else would I need to instantiate or subclass CoolBarManager?). A possible point for doing so is ApplicationWindow#createCoolBarManager2(int), but I'm not sure where and if I ever create an ApplicationWindow.
The simple question is: How do I replace the implementation of CoolBarManager?
ObjC has a very unique way of overriding methods. Specifically, that you can override functions in OSX's own framework. Via "categories" or "Swizzling". You can even override "buried" functions only used internally.
Can someone provide me with an example where there was a good reason to do this? Something you would use in released commercial software and not just some hacked up tool for internal use?
For example, maybe you wanted to improve on some built in method, or maybe there was a bug in a framework method you wanted to fix.
Also, can you explain why this can best be done with features in ObjC, and not in C++ / Java and the like. I mean, I've heard of the ability to load a C library, but allow certain functions to be replaced, with functions of the same name that were previously loaded. How is ObjC better at modifying library behaviour than that?
If you're extending the question from mere swizzling to actual library modification then I can think of useful examples.
As of iOS 5, NSURLConnection provides sendAsynchronousRequest:queue:completionHandler:, which is a block (/closure) driven way to perform an asynchronous load from any resource identifiable with a URL (local or remote). It's a very useful way to be able to proceed as it makes your code cleaner and smaller than the classical delegate alternative and is much more likely to keep the related parts of your code close to one another.
That method isn't supplied in iOS 4. So what I've done in my project is that, when the application is launched (via a suitable + (void)load), I check whether the method is defined. If not I patch an implementation of it onto the class. Henceforth every other part of the program can be written to the iOS 5 specification without performing any sort of version or availability check exactly as if I was targeting iOS 5 only, except that it'll also run on iOS 4.
In Java or C++ I guess the same sort of thing would be achieved by creating your own class to issue URL connections that performs a runtime check each time it is called. That's a worse solution because it's more difficult to step back from. This way around if I decide one day to support iOS 5 only I simply delete the source file that adds my implementation of sendAsynchronousRequest:.... Nothing else changes.
As for method swizzling, the only times I see it suggested are where somebody wants to change the functionality of an existing class and doesn't have access to the code in which the class is created. So you're usually talking about trying to modify logically opaque code from the outside by making assumptions about its implementation. I wouldn't really support that as an idea on any language. I guess it gets recommended more in Objective-C because Apple are more prone to making things opaque (see, e.g. every app that wanted to show a customised camera view prior to iOS 3.1, every app that wanted to perform custom processing on camera input prior to iOS 4.0, etc), rather than because it's a good idea in Objective-C. It isn't.
EDIT: so, in further exposition — I can't post full code because I wrote it as part of my job, but I have a class named NSURLConnectionAsyncForiOS4 with an implementation of sendAsynchronousRequest:queue:completionHandler:. That implementation is actually quite trivial, just dispatching an operation to the nominated queue that does a synchronous load via the old sendSynchronousRequest:... interface and then posts the results from that on to the handler.
That class has a + (void)load, which is the class method you add to a class that will be issued immediately after that class has been loaded into memory, effectively as a global constructor for the metaclass and with all the usual caveats.
In my +load I use the Objective-C runtime directly via its C interface to check whether sendAsynchronousRequest:... is defined on NSURLConnection. If it isn't then I add my implementation to NSURLConnection, so from henceforth it is defined. This explicitly isn't swizzling — I'm not adjusting the existing implementation of anything, I'm just adding a user-supplied implementation of something if Apple's isn't available. Relevant runtime calls are objc_getClass, class_getClassMethod and class_addMethod.
In the rest of the code, whenever I want to perform an asynchronous URL connection I just write e.g.
[NSURLConnection sendAsynchronousRequest:request
queue:[self anyBackgroundOperationQueue]
completionHandler:
^(NSURLResponse *response, NSData *data, NSError *blockError)
{
if(blockError)
{
// oh dear; was it fatal?
}
if(data)
{
// hooray! You know, unless this was an HTTP request, in
// which case I should check the response code, etc.
}
/* etc */
}
So the rest of my code is just written to the iOS 5 API and neither knows nor cares that I have a shim somewhere else to provide that one microscopic part of the iOS 5 changes on iOS 4. And, as I say, when I stop supporting iOS 4 I'll just delete the shim from the project and all the rest of my code will continue not to know or to care.
I had similar code to supply an alternative partial implementation of NSJSONSerialization (which dynamically created a new class in the runtime and copied methods to it); the one adjustment you need to make is that references to NSJSONSerialization elsewhere will be resolved once at load time by the linker, which you don't really want. So I added a quick #define of NSJSONSerialization to NSClassFromString(#"NSJSONSerialization") in my precompiled header. Which is less functionally neat but a similar line of action in terms of finding a way to keep iOS 4 support for the time being while just writing the rest of the project to the iOS 5 standards.
There are both good and bad cases. Since you didn't mention anything in particular these examples will be all-over-the-place.
It's perfectly normal (good idea) to override framework methods when subclassing:
When subclassing NSView (from the AppKit.framework), it's expected that you override drawRect:(NSRect). It's the mechanism used for drawing views.
When creating a custom NSMenu, you could override insertItemWithTitle:action:keyEquivalent:atIndex: and any other methods...
The main thing when subclassing is whether or not your behaviour completes re-defines the old behaviour... or extends it (in which case your override eventually calls [super ...];)
That said, however, you should always stand clear of using (and overriding) any private API methods (those normally have an underscore prefix in their name). This is a bad idea.
You also should not override existing methods via categories. That's also bad. It has undefined behaviour.
If you're talking about categories, you don't override methods with them (because there is no way to call original method, like calling super when subclassing), but only completely replace with your own ones, which makes the whole idea mostly pointless. Categories are only useful for safely extending functionality, and that's the only use I have even seen (and which is a very good, an excellent idea), although indeed they can be used for dangerous things.
If you mean overriding by subclassing, that is not unique. But in Obj-C you can override everything, even private undocumented methods, not just what was declared 'overridable' like in other languages. Personally, I think it's nice, as I remember in Delphi and C++ I used to “hack” access to private and protected members to workaround an internal bug in framework. This is not a good idea, but at some moments it can be a life saver.
There is also method swizzling, but that's not standard language feature, that's a hack. Hacking undocumented internals is rarely a good idea.
And regarding “how can you explain why this can best be done with features in ObjC”, the answer is simple — Obj-C is dynamic, and this freedom is common to almost all dynamic languages (Javascript, Python, Ruby, Io, a lot more). Unless artificially disabled, every dynamic language has it.
Refer to the wikipedia page on dynamic languages for longer explanation and more examples. For example, an even more miraculous things possible in Obj-C and other dynamic languages is that an object can change it's type (class) in place, without recreation.
This guy came up with a pretty neat tool to generate a class dependency graph - however, it relies on parsing your source code and looking for #import directives.
http://seriot.ch/blog.php?article=20110124
https://github.com/nst/objc_dep/blob/master/objc-dep.py
This is neat, but I have a number of problems with this. Not least of which is it doesn't take into account imports of imports nor prefix headers nor whether-or-not the class(es) in the file referenced by the import are actually being used.
I'd like to do something more akin to class-dump and examine the Objective-C metadata stored in the Mach-O file to generate an in-memory representation of the class dependencies.
I'd rather not do this from scratch, so I'm wondering:
Has it already been done?
Is there an open-source library which would provide me with the foundational tools I need to extract this information (a library which examines the Mach-O file and creates a façade of the Objective-C information contained within - such that I could iterate over all of the classes, their methods, properties, ivars, etc and scan for references to other classes) I figure class-dump's source would be a good place to start.
If you have experience in this sort of thing, is what I'm trying to accomplish feasible?
What roadblocks will I need to overcome?
Has it already been done?
Not that I know of.
Is there an open-source library which would provide me with the
foundational tools I need to extract this information?
At the core of class-dump is libMachObjC which does exatly what you want, i.e. parse all classes/methods/ivars and more. The API is very clean, it should be very easy to use.
If you have experience in this sort of thing, is what I'm trying to
accomplish feasible?
Unfortunately, no because some classes don't declare the real class but use id instead. For example, here is the information that can be extracted from a class-dump of UIKit:
#interface UITableView : UIScrollView <NSCoding>
{
int _style;
id <UITableViewDataSource> _dataSource;
id _rowData;
...
The _rowData ivar type information is id but if you check at runtime you will see that _rowData is an instance of the UITableViewRowData class. This information is not present in the Mach-O binary so you have no way to find the relation between UITableView and UITableViewRowData. The same applies for method parameters.
Here's a solution that relies on information in mach.o files, and generates graph dependency based on that information: https://github.com/PaulTaykalo/objc-dependency-visualizer
Has it already been done?
yes - but i can't recommend a good public implementation
Is there an open-source library which would provide me with the foundational tools I need to extract this information (a library which examines the Mach-O file and creates a façade of the Objective-C information contained within - such that I could iterate over all of the classes, their methods, properties, ivars, etc and scan for references to other classes) I figure class-dump's source would be a good place to start.
most use cases would benefit by using the objc runtime facilities objc/... rather than examining the binary.
If you have experience in this sort of thing, is what I'm trying to accomplish feasible?
yes. i've done something similar using the objc runtime.
What roadblocks will I need to overcome?
that depends largely on the level of detail you want... implementation time if you find no such implementation, but i figure you will find a few options if you google the more esoteric functions in the objc runtime; perhaps you would find one in an (open) language binding or bridge?
if you do end up writing one yourself, you can get registered objc classes using objc_getClassList, then access the properties/information you want from there.
I have never made an API in objective-c, and need to do this now.
The "idea" is that I build an API which can be implemented into other applications. Much like Flurry, only for other purposes.
When starting the API, an username, password and mode should be entered. The mode should either be LIVE or BETA (I guess this should be an NSString(?)), then afterwards is should be fine with [MyAPI doSomething:withThisObject]; ect.
So to start it [MyAPI username:#"Username" password:#"Password" mode:#"BETA"];
Can anyone help me out with some tutorials and pointer on how to learn this best?
It sounds like what you want to do is build a static library. This is a compiled .a file containing object code that you'll distribute to a client along with a header file containing the interface. This post is a little outdated but has some good starting points. Or, if you don't mind giving away your source code, you could just deliver a collection of source files to your client.
In terms of developing the API itself, it should be very similar to the way you'd design interfaces and implementations of Objective-C objects in your own apps. You'll have a MyAPI class with functions for initialization, destruction, and all the functionality you want. You could also have multiple classes with different functionality if the interface is complex. Because you've capitalized MyAPI in your code snippet, it looks like you want to use it by calling the class rather than an instance of the class - which is a great strategy if you think you'll only ever need one instance. To accomplish this you can use the singleton pattern.
Because you've used a username and password, I imagine your API will interface with the web internally. I've found parsing JSON to be very straightforward in Objective-C - it's easy to send requests and get information from a server.
Personally I would use an enum of unsigned ints rather than a NSString just because it simplifies comparisons and such. So you could do something like:
enum {
MYAPI_MODE_BETA,
MYAPI_MODE_LIVE,
NUM_MYAPI_MODES
};
And then call:
[MyAPI username:#"Username" password:#"Password" mode:MYAPI_MODE_BETA];
Also makes it easy to check if they've supplied a valid mode. (Must be less than NUM_MYAPI_MODES.)
Good luck!
What is the Objective-C equivalent of Java packages? How do you group and organize your classes in Objective-C?
Question 1: Objective-C equivalent of Java packages?
Objective-C doesn't have an equivalent to Java packages or C++ namespaces. Part of the reason for this is that Objective-C was originally a very thin runtime layer on top of C, and added objects to C with minimum fuss. Unfortunately for us now, naming conflicts are something we have to deal with when using Objective-C. You win some, you lose some...
One small clarification (although it's not much for consolation) is that Objective-C actually has two flat namespaces — one for classes and one for protocols (like Java's interfaces). This doesn't solve any class naming conflicts, but it does mean you can have a protocol and class with the same name (like <NSObject> and NSObject) where the latter usually adopts ("implements") the former. This feature can prevent "Foo / FooImpl" pattern rampant in Java, but sadly doesn't help with class conflicts.
Question 2: How to [name] and organize Objective-C classes?
Naming
The following rules are subjective, but they are decent guidelines for naming Objective-C classes.
If your code can't be run by other code (it's not a framework, plugin, etc. but an end-user application or tool) you only need to avoid conflicts with code you link against. Often, this means you can get away with no prefix at all, so long as the frameworks/plugins/bundles you use have proper namespaces.
If you're developing "componentized" code (like a framework, plugin, etc.) you should choose a prefix (hopefully one that's unique) and document your use of it someplace visible so others know to avoid potential conflicts. For example, the CocoaDev wiki "registry" is a de facto public forum for calling "dibs" on a prefix. However, if your code is something like a company-internal framework, you may be able to use a prefix that someone else already does, so long as you aren't using anything with that prefix.
Organization
Organizing source files on disk is something that many Cocoa developers unfortunately gloss over. When you create a new file in Xcode, the default location is the project directory, right beside your project file, etc. Personally, I put application source in source/, test code (OCUnit, etc.) in test/, all the resources (NIB/XIB files, Info.plist, images, etc.) in resources/, and so on. If you're developing a complex project, grouping source code in a hierarchy of directories based on functionality can be a good solution, too. In any case, a well-organized project directory makes it easier to find what you need.
Xcode really doesn't care where your files are located. The organization in the project sidebar is completely independent of disk location — it is a logical (not physical) grouping. You can organize however you like in the sidebar without affecting disk location, which is nice when your source is stored in version control. On the other hand, if you move the files around on disk, patching up Xcode references is manual and tedious, but can be done. It's easiest to create your organization from the get-go, and create files in the directory where they belong.
My Opinion
Although it could be nice to have a package/namespace mechanism, don't hold your breath for it to happen. Class conflicts are quite rare in practice, and are generally glaringly obvious when they happen. Namespaces are really a solution for a non-problem in Objective-C. (In addition, adding namespaces would obviate the need for workarounds like prefixes, but could introduce a lot more complexity in method invocation, etc.)
The more subtle and devious bugs come from method conflicts when methods are added and/or overridden, not only by subclasses, but also be categories, which can cause nasty errors, since the load order of categories is undefined (nondeterministic). Implementing categories is one of the sharpest edges of Objective-C, and should only be attempted if you know what you're doing, particularly for third-party code, and especially for Cocoa framework classes.
They use long names...
Article on coding style & naming in Cocoa / Objective-C
Discussion whether Obj-C needs namespaces (deleted, archive here)
See
What is the best way to solve an Objective-C namespace collision?
for a discussion of how Objective-C has no namespaces, and the painful hacks this necessitates.
Unfortuantely objective c doesn't have any equivalent to namespace of C#,c++ and package of java....
The naming collisions could be solved by giving contextual name for example if u gonna give a name to method it should imply the class and module that it comes in so that...these problems could be avoided.
Go through the following url to know more on naming convention as advised by apple
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/cocoa/conceptual/ProgrammingWithObjectiveC/Conventions/Conventions.html
What about something like this (inside a directory)?
#define PruebaPaquete ar_com_oxenstudio_paq1_PruebaPaquete
#interface ar_com_oxenstudio_paq1_PruebaPaquete : NSObject {
and importing it like this:
#import "ar/com/oxenstudio/paq1/PruebaPaquete.h"
PruebaPaquete *p = [[PruebaPaquete alloc] init];
and when you have name collision:
#import "ar/com/oxenstudio/paq1/PruebaPaquete.h"
#import "ar/com/oxenstudio/paq2/PruebaPaquete.h"
ar_com_oxenstudio_paq1_PruebaPaquete *p = [[ar_com_oxenstudio_paq1_PruebaPaquete alloc] init];
ar_com_oxenstudio_paq2_PruebaPaquete *p2 = [[ar_com_oxenstudio_paq2_PruebaPaquete alloc] init];
Well, I think all the other answers here seem to focus on naming collisions, but missed at least one important feature, package private access control that java package provides.
When I design a class, I find it is quite often that I just want some specific class(es) to call its methods, b/c they work together to achieve a task, but I don't want all the other unrelated classes to call those methods. That is where java package access control comes in handy, so I can group the related classes into a packaged and make those methods package private access control. But there is no way to do that in objective c.
Without package private access control I find it is very hard to avoid people writing code like this, [[[[[a m1] m2] m3] m4] m5] or [a.b.c.d m1].
Update: Xcode 4.4 introduced "An Objective-C class extension header", in my opinion, that is in some way to provide "package private access control", so if you include the extension header, you can call my "package private" methods; if you only include my public header, you can only call my public API.