Question

For some reason in my below code, the replies array is NSLogging the correct description, but the comment.replies array is NSLogging null.

I immediately presumed that this was due to a memory management issue within my code, but I don’t believe that that is true.

Please can you tell me why this is occurring?

- (TBComment *) dictionaryToComment:(NSDictionary *)dict {
    TBComment *comment = [[TBComment alloc] init];
    [comment setBody:[dict objectForKey:@"body"]];
    [comment setCommentID:[dict objectForKey:@"id"]];
    [comment setCreated_at:[dict objectForKey:@"created_at"]];
    [comment setUpdated_at:[dict objectForKey:@"updated_at"]];
    [comment setUser:[self dictionaryToUser:[dict objectForKey:@"user"]]];
    NSMutableArray *replies = nil;
    if ([[dict allKeys] containsObject:@"replies"]) {
        replies = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
        for (NSDictionary *reply in [dict objectForKey:@"replies"]) {
            NSLog(@"in");
            [replies addObject:[self dictionaryToComment:reply]];
        }
    }
    if (replies != nil) {
        [comment setReplies:replies];
        NSLog(@"COMMENT REPLIES = %@", comment.replies);
        NSLog(@"REPLIES = %@", replies);
        [replies release];
    }
    return [comment autorelease];
}

Console ->

2011-11-30 21:25:14.980 Timbrr[2379:f803] in
2011-11-30 21:25:14.980 Timbrr[2379:f803] COMMENT REPLIES = (null)
2011-11-30 21:25:14.980 Timbrr[2379:f803] REPLIES = (
    "<TBComment: 0x68dbeb0>"
)


- (void) setReplies:(NSArray *)_replies {
    hasReplies = (_replies == nil ? NO : ([_replies count] == 0 ? NO : YES));
    //replies is synthesised
}

Answer 1

I would suspect that either comment is nil (though this would require explicit nil-returning code in TBComment, which is possible, but unusual), or that -replies or -setReplies: are incorrectly implemented. Do you have custom implementations for those?

Your implementation of setReplies: never sets _replies.