Question

I’m using the following code to load many images into an array, but want to know how to do it more efficiently. For example, how could I efficiently load 100 images into an array?

hopAnimation=[[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:
              [UIImage imageNamed:@"frame-1.png"],
              [UIImage imageNamed:@"frame-2.png"],
              [UIImage imageNamed:@"frame-3.png"],
              [UIImage imageNamed:@"frame-4.png"],
              [UIImage imageNamed:@"frame-5.png"],
              [UIImage imageNamed:@"frame-6.png"],
              [UIImage imageNamed:@"frame-7.png"],
              [UIImage imageNamed:@"frame-8.png"],
              [UIImage imageNamed:@"frame-9.png"],
              [UIImage imageNamed:@"frame-10.png"],
.
.
.
               [UIImage imageNamed:@"frame-100.png"],
              nil
              ];

Is there a way to use a for-loop to do this efficiently?

Answer 1

You can use a for loop, sure. You might want to put all the image names into a plist. Then you can create the array of names:

NSArray * imageNames = [NSArray arrayWithContentsOfFile:@"/path/to/names.plist"];

and loop through it to create the array of images:

NSMutableArray * images = [NSMutableArray array];
for( NSString * imageName in imageNames ){
    [images addObject:[UIImage imageNamed:imageName]];
}

Or, if your image files are really named consistently like that, you can loop on an integer and put that into the file name string:

NSMutableArray * images = [NSMutableArray array]; 
for( int i = 1; i <= numImageFiles; i++ ){
    [images addObject:[UIImage imageNamed:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"frame-%d.png", i]]];
}