Question

I am developing an iPhone application which has a lot of different cards, each one of those represents a car. So, every card has some instance variables and one image. My class CarCard is loading data for each car from a .plist file. I want to make many instances in a loop so as to give different name to each instance. E.g:

CarCard *car1 = [[CarCard alloc] initWithSomeINfo: info];
....... *car2 ..........................................;

....... *carN ..........................................;

where N is the number of Cars. The problem is that I do not know what the number N is each time. So i have to make the instances in a loop, but i could not find how to give different names to instances.

Answer 1

An NSMutableArray of CarCard objects is a much better way to go. Instantiate it outside of your loop:

NSMutableArray *cardArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];

then inside your loop you’ll add your objects:

[cardArray addObject:car];

Now you can access them by their indices:

// Card 9, numbering starts at 0
myCar = [cardArray objectAtIndex:8];

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Edited to add

If you want to refer to the cards by their name instead of their position in the array and the names will be unique, you can use a dictionary and refer to the cards by name. Instantiate the dictionary outside of the loop:

NSMutableDictionary *cardDictionary = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];

then inside the loop you’ll add your objects:

[cardDictionary setObject:car forKey:cardName];

Now you can access them by their names:

// Card with the key named "card9"
myCar = [cardDictionary objectForKey:@"card9"];

// Card with the key named "monkey"
myCar = [cardDictionary objectForKey:@"monkey"];