Question

I have an init method that takes values from a NSDictionary. This is within my Friend object.

My question is when do I release this particular instantiation of Friend?

- (id)initWithValue:(NSString *)value {
    Friend *friend = [[Friend alloc] init];
    friend.friendId = [value valueForKeyPath:@"id"];
    friend.friendName = [value valueForKeyPath:@"name"];

    return friend;
}

I call the init method below to add the Friend objects to a friends array

for (id value in dataDict) {
    Friend *friend = [[Friend alloc] initWithValue:value];
    [friends addObject:friend];
    [friend release];
}

I then do the following in code:

Friend *friend = (Friend *)[friends objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];

If I autorelease the Friend object in the init method then I get a message was sent to deallocated instance when I use the above code to get the particular objects value based on the indexPath.row.

Answer 1

Not directly answering your question, but these lines of code are definitely dangerous:

- (id)initWithValue:(NSString *)value {
    Friend *friend = [[Friend alloc] init];

Instead, you should write like this:

- (id)initWithValue:(NSString *)value {
    [super init];
    self.friendId = ...;
    self.friendName = ...;

    return self;
}