Question

Seems like whenever we need to initialize an object, we need to immediately write

-(id) init {
    self = [super init];
    if (self) {
        // initialize values here
    }
    return self;
}

is there a shorter way to do it? Maybe even by a macro?

Answer 1

You can get away with one line fewer, but this isn’t recommended practice anymore:

- (id) init {

    if((self = [super init])){
        // initialize ivars
    }
    return self;
}

Boilerplate is boilerplate, unfortunately, and each of the things that initializers do: assign self to the result of [super init] (or the superclass’s designated initializer), check self is not nil, initialize ivars, and return self (whether nil or a valid object) are all necessary.

To spare yourself some typing, you can make a code snippet in Xcode.