Effective Objective-C 2.0

Effective Objective-C 2.0: 52 Specific Ways to Improve Your iOS and OS X Programs (Effective Software Development Series)

Effective Objective-C 2.0 will help you harness all of Objective-C’s expressive power to write OS X or iOS code that works superbly well in production environments. Using the concise, scenario-driven style pioneered in Scott Meyers’ best-selling Effective C++, Matt Galloway brings together 52 Objective-C best practices, tips, shortcuts, and realistic code examples that are available nowhere else.

Through real-world examples, Galloway uncovers little-known Objective-C quirks, pitfalls, and intricacies that powerfully impact code behavior and performance. You’ll learn how to choose the most efficient and effective way to accomplish key tasks when multiple options exist, and how to write code that’s easier to understand, maintain, and improve. Galloway goes far beyond the core language, helping you integrate and leverage key Foundation framework classes and modern system libraries, such as Grand Central Dispatch.

Coverage includes

• Optimizing interactions and relationships between Objective-C objects
• Mastering interface and API design: writing classes that feel “right at home”
• Using protocols and categories to write maintainable, bug-resistant code
• Avoiding memory leaks that can still occur even with Automatic Reference Counting (ARC)
• Writing modular, powerful code with Blocks and Grand Central Dispatch
• Leveraging differences between Objective-C protocols and multiple inheritance in other languages
• Improving code by more effectively using arrays, dictionaries, and sets
• Uncovering surprising power in the Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Accustoming Yourself to Objective-C
Item 1: Familiarize Yourself with Objective-C’s Roots
Item 2: Minimize Importing Headers in Headers
Item 3: Prefer Literal Syntax over the Equivalent Methods
Item 4: Prefer Typed Constants to Preprocessor #define
Item 5: Use Enumerations for States, Options, and Status Codes

Chapter 2: Objects, Messaging, and the Runtime
Item 6: Understand Properties
Item 7: Access Instance Variables Primarily Directly When Accessing Them Internally
Item 8: Understand Object Equality
Item 9: Use the Class Cluster Pattern to Hide Implementation Detail
Item 10: Use Associated Objects to Attach Custom Data to Existing Classes
Item 11: Understand the Role of objc_msgSend
Item 12: Understand Message Forwarding
Item 13: Consider Method Swizzling to Debug Opaque Methods
Item 14: Understand What a Class Object Is

Chapter 3: Interface and API Design
Item 15: Use Prefix Names to Avoid Namespace Clashes
Item 16: Have a Designated Initializer
Item 17: Implement the description Method
Item 18: Prefer Immutable Objects
Item 19: Use Clear and Consistent Naming
Item 20: Prefix Private Method Names
Item 21: Understand the Objective-C Error Model
Item 22: Understand the NSCopying Protocol

Chapter 4: Protocols and Categories
Item 23: Use Delegate and Data Source Protocols for Interobject Communication
Item 24: Use Categories to Break Class Implementations into Manageable Segments
Item 25: Always Prefix Category Names on Third-Party Classes
Item 26: Avoid Properties in Categories
Item 27: Use the Class-Continuation Category to Hide Implementation Detail
Item 28: Use a Protocol to Provide Anonymous Objects

Chapter 5: Memory Management
Item 29: Understand Reference Counting
Item 30: Use ARC to Make Reference Counting Easier
Item 31: Release References and Clean Up Observation State Only in dealloc
Item 32: Beware of Memory Management with Exception-Safe Code
Item 33: Use Weak References to Avoid Retain Cycles
Item 34: Use Autorelease Pool Blocks to Reduce High-Memory Waterline
Item 35: Use Zombies to Help Debug Memory-Management Problems
Item 36: Avoid Using retainCount

Chapter 6: Blocks and Grand Central Dispatch
Item 37: Understand Blocks
Item 38: Create typedefs for Common Block Types
Item 39: Use Handler Blocks to Reduce Code Separation
Item 40: Avoid Retain Cycles Introduced by Blocks Referencing the Object Owning Them
Item 41: Prefer Dispatch Queues to Locks for Synchronization
Item 42: Prefer GCD to performSelector and Friends
Item 43: Know When to Use GCD and When to Use Operation Queues
Item 44: Use Dispatch Groups to Take Advantage of Platform Scaling
Item 45: Use dispatch_once for Thread-Safe Single-Time Code Execution
Item 46: Avoid dispatch_get_current_queue

Chapter 7: The System Frameworks
Item 47: Familiarize Yourself with the System Frameworks
Item 48: Prefer Block Enumeration to for Loops
Item 49: Use Toll-Free Bridging for Collections with Custom Memory-Management Semantics
Item 50: Use NSCache Instead of NSDictionary for Caches
Item 51: Keep initialize and load Implementations Lean
Item 52: Remember that NSTimer Retains Its Target