Question

I am reasonably new to Xcode and Objective C.

I have successfully loaded all of the GUI objects on one of my views dynamically..

Now i want to repeat the same dynamically loaded content onto all or most of my views..

I have a method in the main view like this:

-(void)loadinfo:(id)sender{
//All dynamically loaded content etc..
}

I currently have the main view calling this method like so.

[self loadinfo];

So now i need to know (without copying and pasting the method into all of my views) how to call the method from the main view into other views?

I hope this all makes sense.

Edit

I am more knowledgeable in PHP so if i was to do the same thing in php i would make a file called functions.php and include that file into all of the pages.. Is it the same concept?

Answer 1

The concept is different from the approach you find with functions in PHP. In Objective C one works with objects. To share behavior (your PHP functions, called methods in Objective C) between objects you need to slot that behavior somewhere into your class hierarchy.

So for your specific case you would implement the loadinfo method in a generic class which is a subclass of NSView, say MyGenericView. Both your view1 and view2 classes would then subclass from that generic class and inherit the loadinfo method.

In case you want to divert from the implementation of loadinfo in your base class, you can override it partially by doing (in view1 or view2):

- (void) loadview {
  [super loadview]; // perform the default implementation
  [self doSomethingDifferint]; // perform subclass specific stuff
}

… or:

- (void) loadview {
  [self doSomethingDifferint]; // perform subclass specific stuff
  [super loadview]; // perform the default implementation
}

… or override completely by doing:

- (void) loadview {
  [self doSomethingCompletelyDifferent]; // perform subclass specific stuff
}

Just on a side note: it’s good practice to follow CamelCase standards when naming your classes and methods in Objective C, so your classes would be View1 and View2 and the method would be loadInfo.

Further, you might want to read up on generic OO principles and Objective C‘s specific aspects of it to take full advantage of the language and its features.