Objective C Object Creation

Intro

I'm learning Objective C for a native OSX project that I'm working on. Here are some quick notes about creating objects.

The way that I don't prefer

The first way is to call two NSObject methods

1. (id)alloc
2. (id)init

This best way is to nest them so that you can be sure you're calling the init method on the newly allocated object.

CustomObject *customObject = [[CustomObject alloc] init];

Some Objects accept a variation on the init method:

- (id)initWithBool:(BOOL)value;
- (id)initWithFloat:(float)value;
- (id)initWithInt:(int)value;
- (id)initWithLong:(long)value;

CustomObject *customObject = [[CustomObject alloc] initWithBool:YES];

However that seems really nasty to me. Thankfully there is a shortcut (id)new method on NSObject which is better suited to my tastes.

CustomObject *customObject = [CustomObject new];

The way that I prefer

Some Objects have factory methods which I much prefer. They allow you to both allocate memory for an Object as well as initialize it with variables.

NSNumber is a good example.

+ (NSNumber *)numberWithBool:(BOOL)value;
+ (NSNumber *)numberWithFloat:(float)value;
+ (NSNumber *)numberWithInt:(int)value;
+ (NSNumber *)numberWithLong:(long)value;

NSNumber *myNum = [NSNumber numberWithInt:32];

This accomplishes the same think as nesting the alloc and initWithInt messages but is much more readable.

More info

Apple Developer Docs

Published

Tags

• objective c 1
• code 21