Question

I have always found this confusing. Can someone please explain it for me?

In a view controller class, I have, for example, a scroll view and I want to add a number of views to it. So I create, within the view controller, a helper method that creates the view and returns it to the caller. The caller in turn adds this new view to the scroll view.

So here I call the method to get a view and pass it directly to addSubView:

[scrollView addSubView:[self getView]];

And here is the method that creates the view:

-(UIView *)getView {

   UIView *v = [[UIView alloc] init];

   // do all the guff I need to configure the view

   return v;
}

The question is where or when does v get released? Should I be assigning it as autorelease when it is created in getView or do I release it after i have called addSubView:? Thanks.

Answer 1

Since -[UIView addSubview:] obtains ownership of the passed-in view by sending it a -retain message, you should be sending the return value of getView an -autorelease message:

return [v autorelease];