Question

In Objective-C, is there a way to get a class and send messages to it when you have the name of the class as a string? For example, is there a function func where func(@"NSString") == [NSString class]?

The reason that I want to know this is I am building a dynamic linker library for a language I am working on, and I want it to have an interface to Objective-C libraries.

Answer 1

Yes — two, in fact. If you have a Foundation-type framework (e.g. from Cocoa, Cocoa Touch or GNUstep), you can use the NSClassFromString() function, which is precisely the same as your func. If you do not want to depend on a framework, there’s a similar runtime function, objc_getClass(), that takes a const char* and returns the named class (or nil if none is found).