Panos Matsinopoulos

Senior Software Engineer: Love Writing and Reading Software, Taking Entrepreneurial Risks, Teaching Computer Programming & Blogging here or in many other places. I also Love Music and I can call myself a small pianist!

Try Objective-C on Code School

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Having done the Apple developer tutorial Getting Started on iOS development, the next was to have a deeper dive in Objective-C. Looking around for online Objective-C tutorials, I came across a very good one, on Code School. The tutorial is called Try Objective-C.

NSLog

NSLog method is used to log stuff on console.

@ Prefix on Literal Values

@"...": This is an NSString * literal.

Store Numbers

NSNumber *: Useful object to store numbers.

Example:

NSNumber *myAge = @44;

See how the literal on the right, has the @ symbol prefix, necessary to assign to an NS object.

Construct Arrays

For arrays use NSArray *

Example:

NSArray *fruits = @[@"Apples", @"Oranges", @"Pears"];

Watch out the @ prefix both in front of array literal and in front of the string literals.

And access value of an item by position: fruits[0], fruits[1] e.t.c.

Mutable Arrays

NSArray is immutable. So, you cannot change it. Use NSMutableArray if you want to create an array that can be changed.

Hashes and Dictionaries

How to create hashes or dictionaries? Use the NSDictionary *.

Example:

NSDictionary *person = @{@"First Name": @"Panos"};

We can access the values using the keys:

person[@"First Name"]

Send message to an object:

[objectVar methodName];

Method description

Use method “description” to get a nice-to-read representation of an object:

[objectVar description]

Unsigned Integers

NSUInteger is a type to stored unsigned integers.

Example:

NSUInteger = 5;

Operations with NSNumbers

This is not so straight forward. You can not just use the + operator, for example. You need to get the NSUInteger version of the NSNumber * and then operate on that.

NSNumber *first = @1;
NSNumber *second = @2;
NSUInteger uiFirst  = [first unsignedIntegerValue];
NSUInteger uiSecond = [second unsignedIntegerValue];

Then

uiFirst + uiSecond

Appending Strings

This will not work: @"foo" + @"bar".

But this will do:

[@"foo " stringByAppendingString:@"bar"]

Initialize String

You can use stringWithString: to initialize a string.

Example:

NSString *firstName = [NSString stringWithString:@"foo"];

Alloc & Init

Create an NSString with alloc and init.

Examples:

NSString *firstName = [[NSString alloc] initWithString:@"foo"];

Comparing 2 NSStrings

[firstName isEqualToString:anotherFirstName]

Enumerate on Arrays

Enumerate and work on each one of the items of an array:

Example:

 NSArray *fruits = @[@"Apples", @"Oranges", @"Pears"];
 for (NSString *fruit in fruits) {
   NSLog(fruit);
 }

Code Blocks

Code blocks work like anonymous functions or closures.

Here is an example of a block that takes arguments and returns value.

NSString * (^sayHello)(NSString *) = ^(NSString *name){
  [NSString stringWithFormat: @"Hello %@", name];
};

Enumerate using blocks

You can send a whole block as an argument to an enumeration and have the block applied to each one of the elements.

NSArray *funnyWords = @[@"Goobly", @"Blobie", @"Fnogie"];
[funnyWords enumerateObjectsUsingBlock: 
    ^(NSString *word, NSUInteger index, BOOL *stop) {
       NSLog(@"%@ is a funny word", word);
    }
];

Defining Class Properties

This is an example of defining class properties.

Example:

@interface Person : NSObject

@property NSString *firstName;
@property NSString *lastName;

@end

The above creates 2 public properties. And 4 methods. 2 setters and 2 getters. One setter to set firstName and one setter to set lastName. One getter to get firstName and one getter to get lastName. Also, it creates a class instance variable with name “firstName” and another one with name “lastName” that one can access directly from the implementation code of the class. However, clients of the class cannot access them.

Public Methods

When you want to declare the public behaviour of a class you declare
it on the interface level

@interface Person : NSObject

-(void)sayHello;

@end

and you implement that on the implementation file, e.g. in Person.m

@implementation Person

-(void)sayHello {
   NSLog(@"Hello");
}
end

Then when you want to call that method, you send the message to the object instance:

Person *p = [[Person alloc] init];
[p sayHello];

Method with arguments

When a method takes arguments, then we are using : to separate the method name from the argument definition:

@interface Person : NSObject

-(NSString *)speak:(NSString *)greeting;

@end

Or when it takes 2 arguments, for example “greeting” and “times”:

-(NSString *)speak:(NSString *) greeting soManyTimes:(NSNumber *)times;

The method name now is speak:soManyTimes:

From the number of colons inside the name we can tell how many arguments it requires when called.

You can make a property readonly as follows:

@interface Person : NSObject

@property (readonly) NSNumber *salary;

@end

Overriding Default Object Constructor

The default object constructor is init. We can override that in the implementation of the class.

@implementation Person

-(Person *)init {
  _salary = @18;
  return [super init];
}

@end

Calling return [super init]; is usually necessary in order to make sure that the Person is correctly constructed as an NSObject.

Instance Variables

Instance variables are declared in the interface.

@interface Coffee : NSObject {
  NSNumber *_temperature;
}
@end

Check whether object responds to a method

We can check whether an object responds to a method at run-time using the respondsToSelector: method

Example:

if ([coffee respondToSelector:@selector(brew)]) {
  NSLog(@"Coffee responds to brew message");
}

Protocols

Protocols are sets of methods that need to be implemented by a class. Which protocols a class needs to implement is declared in the interface of the class. Example:

@interface Person : NSObject <NSCopying>
@end

Person class derives from NSObject and also implements the protocol NSCopying.

Whereas standard constructor/initializer is the init method, one can declare custom initializers. These are methods that have a name that starts with init.

Example:

@interface Person : NSObject

-(Person *) initWithFirstName:(NSString *)firstName
                     lastName:(NSString *)lastName;

@end

and then in the implementation you can assign the arguments to properties or instance variables.

When you instantiate the object you can call:

Person *p = [[Person alloc] initWithFirstName:@"First" lastName:@"Last"];

Object instance responds to class

An object instance responds to class which returns the class of the object. This can be used, for example, to dynamically instantiate an object.

[[[objectVar class] alloc] init];

without knowing the actual class of the object instance.

Use the special type id instead of NSObject * for when you have a generic Objective-C object that you don’t know the type of at compile time.

What’s Next from Here ##

I will go to Learn Objective-C in 24 Days. But first, I may take a short break to work with Swift. It seems that it may be more Ruby-like language.

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