Home/ Questions/Q 279675
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-12T05:03:10+00:00

I’m sure there is a correct way to do this, I’m new to objective-c

  • 0

I’m sure there is a correct way to do this, I’m new to objective-c and cocoa touch so I don’t know what it is.

I have an application that has a (simplified) view hierarchy of

Window
  --Button
  --Button
  --Subview
    --Sub-Subview

What I’m trying to do is get the subview to do something in response to a touch event on one of the buttons. I can come up with a few methods of doing this, but I’m not sure which one is the preferred method.

  • Add an outlet to the Main view controller (handling the window) and storing a reference to the subview. When I need to message subview, I can simply pass the message I want (since I’ll already have a reference). This seems workable, if a little … fragile?

  • Add a second action to the button (the first is a method on the view controller, the second would be a method on the subview class). This seems problematic since it is important that the button’s action in the view controller fire before the subview tries to handle the message

  • Some sort of delegate system?

  • Write a new view controller for the subview and have the main view controller pass that a message (not sure the correct way for the first controller to get a reference to the second. In addition, the code actually required for the subview is relatively small – a whole new controller seems like overkill).

  • Something else that I’m overlooking completely?

Some direction would be appreciate!

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You say that the button has an action on the view controller (which view controller?). And you want the action/method call on the subview to happen after that action. So I would suggest your view controller action post a notification of the event, and the subview can listen for that event. Alternatively, the view controller can have a connection to the subview.

    That ensures the order of actions – most observation techniques will not ensure that order.

    Matt Gallagher wrote a useful article, Five approaches to listening, observing and notifying in Cocoa on observing tehcniques which might help you.

    • 0