Question

I’m trying to build words in arrays by their key value in a dictionary. However, it won’t work the way I’d like it to, because I can’t “copy” a UIImageView.

It would be PERFECT, if when adding the letter from the dictionary to an array, it gives me a copy instead of the real object. I don’t want to make multiple images of the same letter and add it to the dictionary, because then I could no longer call it by key “s” or “a”, and I need more than one array to use the same letters at at time.

What can I do?

//How I create the letters
        char s = 's';
        NSString *key = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%c", s];
        alphabetS = [[UIImageView alloc] init]];
        [alphabetS setImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"s.png"]];
        [allTilesDictionary setObject:alphabetS forKey:key];
        [alphabetS release];


//How I use the imageviews from the dictionary
    NSMutableArray *wordOne = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithObjects:[allTilesDictionary objectForKey:@"s"],[allTilesDictionary objectForKey:@"h"],[allTilesDictionary objectForKey:@"o"],[allTilesDictionary objectForKey:@"p"], nil];

EDIT: My solution. It works perfectly.

for (UIImageView *letters in wordOne)
{

    newLetter = [[UIImageView alloc] init];
    newLetter.image = letters.image;
    newLetter.userInteractionEnabled = YES;

    //I can now either lay them out wherever I want on the view, or add them to a new array.
}

Answer 1

Your original code, slightly modified:

//How I create the letters
        char s = 's';
        NSString *key = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%c", s];
        [allTilesDictionary setObject:[UIImage imageNamed:@"s.png"] forKey:key];


//How I use the imageviews from the dictionary
    NSMutableArray *wordOne = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithObjects:[allTilesDictionary objectForKey:@"s"],[allTilesDictionary objectForKey:@"h"],[allTilesDictionary objectForKey:@"o"],[allTilesDictionary objectForKey:@"p"], nil];

Your use of that code, slightly modified:

for (UIImage *letters in wordOne)
{

    newLetter = [[UIImageView alloc] init];
    newLetter.image = letters;
    newLetter.userInteractionEnabled = YES;

    //I can now either lay them out wherever I want on the view, or add them to a new array.
}

No unnecessary UIImageViews created.