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Asked: 2026-05-23T09:22:53+00:00

I’m still quite the beginner at iOS and so I’ve been doing lots of

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I’m still quite the beginner at iOS and so I’ve been doing lots of tutorials, lately.

Let’s say I was making an app such as a calculator, with let’s say 24 buttons. I’ve seen example code where the button’s label gets used to figure out what button it is, but that seems really kludgey, especially when trying to translate the app.

So is it better to just bite the bullet and have one IBOutlet for each and every button instead? why or why not?

If not, what would be the most elegant way to go about doing this, while staying in the MVC paradigm?

Ok I just was looking back at my code and now i feel more like a noob than before… I really was talking about IBActions, not so much IBOutlets… Should I have a whole bunch of IBActions for the different buttons? here’s what it looks like right now in the viewController.h file:

- (IBAction)digitPressed:(UIButton *)sender;
- (IBAction)operationPressed:(UIButton *)sender;
- (IBAction)dotPressed:(UIButton *)sender;
- (IBAction)button_mClear_Pressed:(UIButton *) sender;
- (IBAction)button_mPlus_Pressed:(UIButton *) sender;
- (IBAction)button_mMinus_Pressed:(UIButton *) sender;
- (IBAction)button_mRecall_Pressed:(UIButton *) sender;
- (IBAction)button_AC_Pressed:(UIButton *) sender;
- (IBAction)button_PlusMinus_Pressed:(UIButton *) sender;

why does that just feel repetitive and inelegant to me?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you use IBOutlets and wire them up in Interface Builder/Xcode 4 is more a matter of taste, than a programming decision. And doing so or not does not necessarily affect the mvc paradigm.

    It is your choice, if you keep 24 IBOutlets in your viewcontroller and load the buttons from a nib, as it is maybe easier to arrage them in your interface, or to have an array full of buttons, and add them to your view programmatically and set them up with the right actions.

    You can also have the buttons in different nibs for different viewcontroller — lets say for the number pad, the simple commands and the higher commands and functions. each of the viewcontrollers would have a delegate of a certain protocol, which all would be implemented by on ‘BrainController’.This setup might be a bit overkill for a simple calculator, but would allow you to use nibs, without a viewcontoller overcrowded with IBOutlets. And you could re-use oarts of it in other project, i.e. the numberpad in an app with a remote control interface.

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