Table of Contents
Introduction xiv
1 The Objective-C Philosophy 1
Understanding the Object Model 2
A Tale of Two Type Systems 4
C Is Objective-C 5
The Language and the Library 7
The History of Objective-C 9
Cross-Platform Support 12
Compiling Objective-C Programs 14
2 An Objective-C Primer 17
Declaring Objective-C Types 18
Sending Messages 22
Understanding Selectors 26
Declaring Classes 28
Using Protocols 33
Adding Methods to a Class 35
Using Informal Protocols 38
Synthesizing Methods with Declared Properties 39
Understanding self, _cmd, super 44
Understanding the isa Pointer 47
Initializing Classes 50
Reading Type Encodings 53
Using Closures 56
3 Memory Management 59
Retaining and Releasing 60
Assigning to Instance Variables 61
Avoiding Retain Cycles 63
Autorelease Pools 64
Using Autoreleased Constructors 66
Autoreleasing Objects in Accessors 67
Supporting Automatic Garbage Collection 68
Interoperating with C 70
Using Weak References 71
Allocating Scanned Memory 73
4 Common Objective-C Patterns 75
Supporting Two-Stage Creation 76
Copying Objects 78
Archiving Objects 80
Creating Designated Initializers 84
Enforcing the Singleton Pattern 87
Delegation 89
Providing Façades 91
Creating Class Clusters 93
Using Run Loops 96
5 Numbers 99
Storing Numbers in Collections 101
Performing Decimal Arithmetic 105
Converting Between Strings and Numbers 108
Reading Numbers from Strings 110
6 Manipulating Strings 113
Creating Constant Strings 114
Comparing Strings 115
Processing a String One Character at a Time 119
Converting String Encodings 122
Trimming Strings 125
Splitting Strings 126
Copying Strings 128
Creating Strings from Templates 130
Storing Rich Text 133
7 Working with Collections 135
Using Arrays 137
Manipulating Indexes 139
Storing Unordered Groups of Objects 141
Creating a Dictionary 143
Iterating Over a Collection 145
Finding an Object in a Collection 149
Subclassing Collections 152
8 Dates and Times 157
Finding the Current Date 158
Converting Dates for Display 160
Calculating Elapsed Time 163
Parsing Dates from Strings 165
Receiving Timer Events 166
9 Working with Property Lists 169
Storing Collections in Property Lists 170
Reading Data from Property Lists 173
Converting Property List Formats 176
Storing User Defaults 178
Storing Arbitrary Objects in User Defaults 182
10 Interacting with the Environment 185
Getting Environment Variables 186
Parsing Command-Line Arguments 188
Accessing the User’s Locale 190
Supporting Sudden Termination 191
11 Key-Value Coding 195
Accessing Values by Key 196
Ensuring KVC Compliance 197
Understanding Key Paths 201
Observing Keys 203
Ensuring KVO Compliance 205
12 Handling Errors 209
Runtime Differences for Exceptions 210
Throwing and Catching Exceptions 214
Using Exception Objects 216
Managing Memory with Exceptions 218
Passing Error Delegates 221
Returning Error Values 222
Using NSError 223
13 Accessing Directories and Files 227
Reading a File 228
Moving and Copying Files 230
Getting File Attributes 232
Manipulating Paths 234
Determining if a File or Directory Exists 236
Working with Bundles 238
Finding Files in System Locations 240
14 Threads 245
Creating Threads 246
Controlling Thread Priority 247
Synchronizing Threads 250
Storing Thread-Specific Data 252
Waiting for a Condition 255
15 Blocks and Grand Central 259
Binding Variables to Blocks 260
Managing Memory with Blocks 264
Performing Actions in the Background 267
Creating Custom Work Queues 269
16 Notifications 273
Requesting Notifications 274
Sending Notifications 276
Enqueuing Notifications 277
Sending Notifications Between Applications 278
17 Network Access 283
Wrapping C Sockets 284
Connecting to Servers 286
Sharing Objects Over a Network 289
Finding Network Peers 292
18 Debugging Objective-C 297
Inspecting Objects 298
Recognizing Memory Problems 300
Watching Exceptions 302
Asserting Expectations 304
Logging Debug Messages 306
19 The Objective-C Runtime 309
Sending Messages by Name 310
Finding Classes by Name 312
Testing If an Object Understands a Method 313
Forwarding Messages 315
Finding Classes 318
Inspecting Classes 320
Creating New Classes 322
Index 325
