Is there a way to synthesize setters/getters for class variables in Objective-C?

Question

I find myself declaring bunch of class variables and it is really tiring to write simple get/set methods for each variable. So, the question is how to synthesize setters/getter for class variables in objective-c?

Answer 1

Can you not just en editor macro or something?

Answer 2

something like this goes in your header, after the interface:

@property (retain) NSString* caption;

then this goes immediatley inside the implementation:

@synthesize caption;

Check out this tutorial for more details: http://www.cocoadevcentral.com/d/learn%5Fobjectivec/

Answer 3

A property doesn't need to reference an ivar. You can have a dynamic property return a static variable if you really want.

Just use @dynamic and implement the getter and setter to reference static variables from your implementation file.

Answer 4

Usually when you are grouping a set of related variables that are meant to be accessed globally, you create what is called a Singleton:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/145154/what-does-your-objective-c-singleton-look-like

This means you have one class level method that gives you back a shared instance - so you'd have a call like:

[MyClass sharedInstance].myProperty

Since the values are you are storing are true class instance variables, you can use normal properties, but all classes will be working with the same shared data.

Note that some people dislike the use of singletons, you may want to read some caveats about the practice:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/86582/singleton-how-should-it-be-used

But since you already start with one inherent singleton in iPhone development (the application delegate, which anyone can access at any time) making light use of the technique does not hurt if you are careful. Note that instead of creating a Singleton class, one alternative is to have the application delegate create a single instance of a variable storage class, and have everyone access that through the delegate...