Question

I noticed some code example in Apple’s documentation shows the following style when declaring the property:

@property (nonatomic, getter=isActivated) BOOL activated;

I understand it allows you to specify a certain name for your getter method. I’d like to know what is the reason and advantage to use this style.

Will I be able to use the dot notation to get the value (e.g. BOOL aBool = someObject.isActivated)? Or should I use
[someObject isActivated];
to access the property? Thanks!

Answer 1

No, the getter keyword only changes the method name. The idea is that you’ll access the property just like a variable:

if (self.activated) { ... }
self.activated = YES;

But when you’re sending a message to the object, it’s readable code: if ([self isActivated]) { ... }.