Can't populate object property in uiviewcontroller on iPhone

Question

I have a uiviewcontroller with two properties: trackName and playerObject. PlayerObject also has a trackName property. I call this uiviewcontroller from my main uiviewController with this code:

SecondaryViewController *nextViewController = [[SecondaryViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"SecondaryViewController" bundle:nil];
NSString *trackName = @"a track";
nextViewController.trackName = trackName;
[self.navigationController pushViewController:nextViewController animated:YES];
[nextViewController release];

In SecondaryViewController I override the initwithnibname method to set the trackName of the playerObject. I do this with this code:

- (id)initWithNibName:(NSString *)nibNameOrNil bundle:(NSBundle *)nibBundleOrNil {
if (self = [super initWithNibName:nibNameOrNil bundle:nibBundleOrNil]) {
    playerObject.trackName = trackName;
}
playerObject.trackName = trackName;
return self;

}

Finally my playerObject has all of the view data the SecondaryViewController will need. It looks like:

- (void)awakeFromNib{
NSString *s = trackName;
    //more code relevant to the the view controller
}

When I debug, the trackName string in the playerObject is nil. I assume I'm doing something wrong. How can I have this value populated with the trackName I originally passed in the main uiview controller?

Answer 1

It seems like when you are initing the viewController the playerObject variable has not yet been set, could this be possible?

Answer 2

This can sometimes happen when you override initWithNibName:bundle:.

Instead use viewDidLoad to do setup. Apple guarantees all required setup is performed before this method is called (not the case with initWithNibName:bundle:).