On 20/05/2009, at 11:11 PM, Jerry Krinock wrote:
I still say, use a delegate. Think of a delegate as a general-
purpose ivar. Lots of Cocoa classes have delegates that I don't
always use. A delegate is not ugly. Just hold your nose if
necessary, add a delegate and move on.
I'm coming around to this view. At least a delegate is not committed
to any particular functionality, so adding it could be useful in a
general way, even if it is unused by the framework.
Given that then, and the idea that I'm using it to effectively extend
the ivars of an object, I'm also considering the wisdom of the
following (feel free to comment/criticise):
Object A supports NSCoding and can be archived as usual, as well as
NSCopying. So that the delegate can effectively extend A, the
following informal protocol is proposed for direct support by A.
@interface NSObject (MyObjectDelegate)
- (void) object:(MyObject*) obj willBeEncodedWithCoder:(NSCoder*) coder;
- (void) object:(MyObject*) obj wasInitedWithCoder:(NSCoder*) coder;
- (void) object:(MyObject*) obj didMakeCopy:(MyObject*) copy withZone:
(NSZone*) aZone;
- (void) objectWillBeDeallocated:(MyObject*) obj;
@end
Then, in A's -encodeWithCoder: I call the delegate's first method if
it responds to it, followed by a conditional encoding of the delegate.
In -initWithCoder:, I decode the delegate, then at the end call the
second method, if the delegate responds. Thus, if the delegate is
extending A, archiving A gives it a proper chance to store itself in
the archive on A's behalf. If the delegate isn't extending A, it
doesn't get these messages, though it will be conditionally encoded
anyway.
While the delegate could be simply unconditionally archived, it's
unsafe to assume that it should be, since A has no idea what it is.
That's why it needs to send it a special message so it can archive
itself. If it isn't archived, -initWithCoder: wouldn't have a delegate
to send the message to so the dearchiving would be incomplete. I'm
unsure about the wisdom of this, even though in my specific case I
know that the delegate will be a small extension object.
Copying and deallocation are straightforward, I think.
--Graham
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