ios - How should private and public members be implemented in objective-c?

Question

I had some discussion related to the use of properties and instance variables at work, therefore I would like to find a wiki answer for that. Now, I know there's no real private member type in objective-c, everything is pretty much public. However, I'm a little bit concerned about the way we should design our classes and also to comply to OOP principles. I would like to hear opinions of these three design approaches:

A. According to various post and even to a new Stanford university iPhone development courses, you should always use properties everywhere you can. However IMHO, this approach brakes OOP design principles because in this case, all members become public. Why do I need to publish all my internal/local instance variables to outside? Also, there's some very little (but still) overhead if you use synthesized setters via properties, instead using local ivar directly. Here's a sample:

//==== header file =====//
@interface MyClass : NSObject

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *publicMemberWithProperty;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *propertyForPrivateMember;

@end

B. Another approach is to declare ivars in header file (without declaring relative properties) for private members, and in the same header file, to declare pure properties (without declaring relative ivars) for public members. In such case, ivars would be used directly in the class. This approach makes sense but not uses all benefits from properties because we have manually to release old values before setting the new ones. Here's a sample:

//==== header file =====//
@interface MyClass : NSObject{
  NSString *_privateMember;
}

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *publicMemberWithProperty;

@end

C. To declare pure properties (without declaring relative ivars) for public members in header file, and to declare pure properties (without declaring relative ivars) for private members in private interface in implementation file. This approach IMHO is more clear than the first one, but the same question remains: why do we have to have properties for internal/local members? Here's a sample:

//==== header file =====//
@interface MyClass : NSObject

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *publicMemberWithProperty;

@end

//==== implementation file =====//
@interface MyClass()

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *propertyForPrivateMember;

@end

This decision freedom annoys me a little bit and I would like to find a confirmation from respective sources about how things should be done. However, I was unable to find such strict statements in Apple docs on that, so please post a link to apple docs if any exists, or to any other theory that clears that.

Answer 1

By using class extensions you can have private properties.

A class extension syntax is simple:

Inside the .m-file, that has the class, create a unnamed category:

.h

@interface OverlayViewController : UIViewController <VSClickWheelViewDelegate>
- (IBAction)moreButtonClicked:(id)sender;
- (IBAction)cancelButtonClicked:(id)sender;
@end

.m

#import "OverlayViewController.h"

@interface OverlayViewController ()
@property(nonatomic) NSInteger amount;
@property(retain,nonatomic)NSArray *colors;
@end

@implementation OverlayViewController
@synthesize amount = amount_;
@synthesize colors = colors_;

//…

@end

Now you got all the aspects of properties for private members, without exposing them to public. There should be no overhead to synthesized properties to written getter/setters, as the compiler will create more or less the same at compile time.

Note that this code uses synthesized ivars. No ivar declaration in the header is needed.

There is a nice cocoawithlove article, about this approach.

You also ask why to use properties for private ivars. There are several good reasons:

• properties take care for ownership and memory management.
• at any point in future you can decide, to write a custom getter/setter. i.e. to reload a tableview, once a NSArray ivar was newly set. If you used properties consequently, no other changes are needed.
• Key Value Coding support properties.
• public readonly properties can be re-declared to private readwrite properties.

---

Since LLVM 3 it is also possible, to declare ivars in class extensions

@interface OverlayViewController (){
    NSInteger amount;
    NSArray *colors;
}
@end

or even at the implementation block

@implementation OverlayViewController{
    NSInteger amount;
    NSArray *colors;
}
//…
@end

see "WWDC2011: Session 322 - Objective-C Advancements in Depth" (~03:00)