Question

I am attempting to send and receive messages through NSNotificationCenter in Objective-C. However, I haven’t been able to find any examples on how to do this. How do you send and receive messages through NSNotificationCenter?

Answer 1

@implementation TestClass

- (void) dealloc
{
    // If you don't remove yourself as an observer, the Notification Center
    // will continue to try and send notification objects to the deallocated
    // object.
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self];
    [super dealloc];
}

- (id) init
{
    self = [super init];
    if (!self) return nil;

    // Add this instance of TestClass as an observer of the TestNotification.
    // We tell the notification center to inform us of "TestNotification"
    // notifications using the receiveTestNotification: selector. By
    // specifying object:nil, we tell the notification center that we are not
    // interested in who posted the notification. If you provided an actual
    // object rather than nil, the notification center will only notify you
    // when the notification was posted by that particular object.

    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
        selector:@selector(receiveTestNotification:) 
        name:@"TestNotification"
        object:nil];

    return self;
}

- (void) receiveTestNotification:(NSNotification *) notification
{
    // [notification name] should always be @"TestNotification"
    // unless you use this method for observation of other notifications
    // as well.

    if ([[notification name] isEqualToString:@"TestNotification"])
        NSLog (@"Successfully received the test notification!");
}

@end

… somewhere else in another class …

- (void) someMethod
{

    // All instances of TestClass will be notified
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] 
        postNotificationName:@"TestNotification" 
        object:self];

}