Question

I understand that methods available for other classes to call should be in the header file..but I’m a little confused when the @property should be in the header file and when it should be in the implementation file.

How do you make that decision, and what difference does it make?

Answer 1

Any property that you want publicly exposed to the other classes goes in the .h file. The ‘private’ properties (pun intended) go in the implementation file in a anonymous category or class extension. You might also make the .h version of the property readonly for example, and the .m version readwrite.

An implementation file with properties defined in a Private Category

@interface CPClassFileName ()
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *string;
@end



@implementation
...
@end