There isn't, as others have already said, such a thing as a private method in Objective-C. However, starting in Objective-C 2.0 (meaning Mac OS X Leopard, iPhone OS 2.0, and later) you can create a category with an empty name (i.e. @interface MyClass ()
) called Class Extension. What's unique about a class extension is that the method implementations must go in the same @implementation MyClass
as the public methods. So I structure my classes like this:
In the .h file:
@interface MyClass {
// My Instance Variables
}
- (void)myPublicMethod;
@end
And in the .m file:
@interface MyClass()
- (void)myPrivateMethod;
@end
@implementation MyClass
- (void)myPublicMethod {
// Implementation goes here
}
- (void)myPrivateMethod {
// Implementation goes here
}
@end
I think the greatest advantage of this approach is that it allows you to group your method implementations by functionality, not by the (sometimes arbitrary) public/private distinction.
There is also an easier way to access the view instead of dealing with the nib as an array.
1) Create a custom View subclass with any outlets that you want to have access to later. --MyView
2) in the UIViewController that you want to load and handle the nib, create an IBOutlet property that will hold the loaded nib's view, for instance
in MyViewController (a UIViewController subclass)
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIView *myViewFromNib;
(dont forget to synthesize it and release it in your .m file)
3) open your nib (we'll call it 'myViewNib.xib') in IB, set you file's Owner to MyViewController
4) now connect your file's Owner outlet myViewFromNib to the main view in the nib.
5) Now in MyViewController, write the following line:
[[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"myViewNib" owner:self options:nil];
Now as soon as you do that, calling your property "self.myViewFromNib" will give you access to the view from your nib!
Best Answer
To add what Peter wrote: Yes you can, and it's also a fairly common method. For example, since 10.5 there's a class called
NSViewController
which does just that, and the interface builder has a template for that, too.The steps are:
NSViewController
, it's done by-initWithNibName:bundle:
. In this case, the view is set at[self view]
.Slightly off topic, but I think it's worth spending some time for you to learn a bit of Objective-C and Cocoa program using it, before directly delving into the world of Cocoa bridges to other languages, be it RubyCocoa, PyObjC, or clozure-CL. That's because almost all of the Cocoa documentation, blog posts etc. is written for Objective-C. Objective-C is not a difficult language to learn, especially if you know OO and C already.