Question

I am developing my first iphone ‘Diary’ app, which uses custom ‘Entry’ objects that hold an NSString title, NSString text and NSDate creationDate. When I try to archive an NSMutableArray of Entry objects, and later retrieve them the next time the view loads, the app crashes. I have gone through a bunch of sample codes and examples that use NSKeyedArchivers, but still couldn’t figure out why that happens. I am guessing there is a problem with the initialization of the array that holds the entries but not sure…

Here is the code, maybe you could find something that I have persistently overseen…”

//--------- Entry.m---------------

- (id) initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder{

if ((self = [super init])) {
    self.title = [[aDecoder decodeObjectForKey:@"title"] retain];
    self.text = [[aDecoder decodeObjectForKey:@"text"] retain];
    self.created = [[aDecoder decodeObjectForKey:@"created"] retain];
}
return self;

}

- (void) encodeWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aCoder{

[aCoder encodeObject:self.title forKey:@"title"];
[aCoder encodeObject:self.text forKey:@"text"];
[aCoder encodeObject:self.created forKey:@"created"];

}

//-------------- Diary View Controller.m

- (NSString *)dataFilePath {
NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, 
     NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString *documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];
return [documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:kFilename];
}

- (void) writeDataToArchive {
NSMutableData *data = [[NSMutableData alloc] init];
NSKeyedArchiver *archiver = [[NSKeyedArchiver alloc]
                             initForWritingWithMutableData:data];

[archiver encodeObject:self.entriesArray forKey:@"entriesArray"];
[archiver finishEncoding];
BOOL result = [data writeToFile:[self dataFilePath]  atomically:YES];
[archiver release];
[data release];    
}

- (void)addItem:sender {
int count = [entriesArray count] +1;    
NSString *newEntryTitle = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Entry %d", count];    
Entry *anEntry = [[Entry alloc] initWithTitle:newEntryTitle text:@"-" 
         created:[NSDate date]];
[entriesArray addObject:anEntry];
[self.tableView reloadData];

[anEntry release];
[self writeDataToArchive];
}

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
NSString *filePath = [self dataFilePath];
if ([[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:filePath]) {     
     NSData *data = [[NSMutableData alloc]
                     initWithContentsOfFile:[self dataFilePath]];

     NSKeyedUnarchiver *unarchiver = [[NSKeyedUnarchiver alloc]
          initForReadingWithData:data];
     NSMutableArray *array = [unarchiver decodeObjectForKey:@"entriesArray"];     
     entriesArray = [array mutableCopy];
     [array release];
     [unarchiver finishDecoding];
     [unarchiver release];
     [data release];
}
}

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:
    (NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    // ... some other stuff
     NSUInteger row = indexPath.row;
     Entry *entry = [entriesArray objectAtIndex:row];

     cell.textLabel.text = entry.title;
     return cell;
}

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

You should not release array in viewDidLoad because you do not own it.

Please review the Cocoa memory management Rules because there are a couple of other memory management issues in your code. In particular,

self.title = [[aDecoder decodeObjectForKey:@"title"] retain];
self.text = [[aDecoder decodeObjectForKey:@"text"] retain];
self.created = [[aDecoder decodeObjectForKey:@"created"] retain];

in your initWithCoder: method all leak on the assumption the properties are retain or copy.