properties - Objective-C property that is readonly publicly, but has a private setter

Question

I'd like to use the @property syntax to declare a synthesized property that is publicly readonly but has a setter that can be called privately from within the class.

Since it's Objective-C, this basically means that the setFoo: method would be synthesized, but calling it outside of the class itself would result in a warning (unrecognized selector). To trigger the warning I have to declare the property readonly; is there any way to force a synthesized setter that is only available within the class?

Answer 1

I think what you're looking for are called class extensions. You would declare the property read-only in the header:

@interface MyClass : NSObject {
}

@property (readonly, assign) NSInteger myInteger;

@end

Then redeclare in your class extension in the implementation file:

@interface MyClass ()

@property (readwrite, assign) NSInteger myInteger;

@end


@implementation MyClass

@end

For more check out Apple's documentation