Question

I’m confused on why the observer is never removed in the following code. In my viewDidAppear I have the following:

-(void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated{

id gpsObserver = [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] 
                          addObserverForName:FI_NOTES[kNotificationsGPSUpdated] 
                          object:nil 
                          queue:[NSOperationQueue mainQueue] 
                          usingBlock:^(NSNotification *note){

                              NSLog(@"run once, and only once!");

                [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:gpsObserver];

        }];

}

The observer never gets removed and the statement is output every time the notification is sent out. Can anyone provide any guidance?

Answer 1

When the block is pushed onto the stack by addObserverForName: the method has not yet returned so gpsObserver is nil (under ARC) or garbage/undefined (not under ARC). Declare the variable using __block outside and this should work.

__block __weak id gpsObserver;

gpsObserver = [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] 
                          addObserverForName:FI_NOTES[kNotificationsGPSUpdated] 
                          object:nil 
                          queue:[NSOperationQueue mainQueue] 
                          usingBlock:^(NSNotification *note){

                              NSLog(@"run once, and only once!");

                [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:gpsObserver];

        }];

I’ve added an __weak to ensure there is no memory leak (as per Matt’s answer). Code not tested.