Question

I am trying to declare a UInt32 variable that can be accessed by any method in the class..

so its global to the classes methods but not to any other class…

I am trying to do it like this in the .h

@interface EngineRequests : NSObject {

    UInt32 dataVersion;
}

@property (copy) UInt32 dataVersion;

but thats not working.. I’m getting an error on the line @property etc.. do I even need that or is it fine to just use the UInt32 at the top.

Answer 1

You could try

@interface EngineRequests : NSObject {
@protected
   UInt32 dataVersion;
}

@property (assign) UInt32 dataVersion;
@end

@implementation EngineRequests

@synthesize dataVersion;

// methods can access self.dataVersion

@end

But you don’t really need the property, unless you want to grant/control outside access. You could just declare UInt32 dataVersion in the class interface and then reference dataVersion in the implementation without self. Either way, @protected will prevent outside classes from accessing dataVersion directly.

Have you read up on Objective-C Properties?

Initialization

Your EngineRequests is a subclass of NSObject. As such, you can (usually should) override NSObject‘s -(id)init method, like such:

-(id)init {
   self = [super init];
   if (self != nil) {
      self.dataVersion = 8675309; // omit 'self.' if you have no '@property'
   }
   return self;
}

Or create your own -(id)initWithVersion:(UInt32)version;.