Question

I am parsing some JSON from the internet and then adding them to an array which is the datasource for my UITableView. I am not sure when I should be releasing my array?

.h: items

@property(nonatomic,retain)NSMutableArray*  items;

.m: connectionDidFinishLoading

// fetch succeeded    
    NSString* json_string = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:retrievedData encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];

    //Check ST status
    int status =  [[[[json_string objectFromJSONString] valueForKey:@"response"] valueForKey:@"status"]intValue];
    //NSLog(@"Status: %d", status);

    items = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
    NSDictionary* messages = [[NSDictionary alloc] init]; 

    switch (status) {
        case 200:
            messages = [[[json_string objectFromJSONString] valueForKey:@"messages"] valueForKey:@"message"];

            for (NSDictionary *message in messages)
            {
                [items addObject:message];
            }
            [self.tableView reloadData];
        break;

        default:
        break;
    }

Answer 1

One, you might want to declare items as an instance of NSMutableArray if you intend to call addObject: on it.

Two, declare it as a property so that if you end up getting it multiple times the older value will be released when you do.

self.items = [NSMutableArray array];

And the correct point of releasing it would be dealloc.