Table of Contents
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
About the Author xvii
Chapter 1: Accustoming Yourself to Objective-C 1
Item 1: Familiarize Yourself with Objective-C’s Roots 1
Item 2: Minimize Importing Headers in Headers 4
Item 3: Prefer Literal Syntax over the Equivalent Methods 8
Item 4: Prefer Typed Constants to Preprocessor #define 12
Item 5: Use Enumerations for States, Options, and Status Codes 17
Chapter 2: Objects, Messaging, and the Runtime 25
Item 6: Understand Properties 25
Item 7: Access Instance Variables Primarily Directly When Accessing Them Internally 33
Item 8: Understand Object Equality 36
Item 9: Use the Class Cluster Pattern to Hide Implementation Detail 42
Item 10: Use Associated Objects to Attach Custom Data to Existing Classes 47
Item 11: Understand the Role of objc_msgSend 50
Item 12: Understand Message Forwarding 54
Item 13: Consider Method Swizzling to Debug Opaque Methods 62
Item 14: Understand What a Class Object Is 66
Chapter 3: Interface and API Design 73
Item 15: Use Prefix Names to Avoid Namespace Clashes 73
Item 16: Have a Designated Initializer 78
Item 17: Implement the description Method 84
Item 18: Prefer Immutable Objects 89
Item 19: Use Clear and Consistent Naming 95
Item 20: Prefix Private Method Names 102
Item 21: Understand the Objective-C Error Model 104
Item 22: Understand the NSCopying Protocol 109
Chapter 4: Protocols and Categories 115
Item 23: Use Delegate and Data Source Protocols for Interobject Communication 115
Item 24: Use Categories to Break Class Implementations into Manageable Segments 123
Item 25: Always Prefix Category Names on Third-Party Classes 127
Item 26: Avoid Properties in Categories 130
Item 27: Use the Class-Continuation Category to Hide Implementation Detail 133
Item 28: Use a Protocol to Provide Anonymous Objects 140
Chapter 5: Memory Management 145
Item 29: Understand Reference Counting 145
Item 30: Use ARC to Make Reference Counting Easier 153
Item 31: Release References and Clean Up Observation State Only in dealloc 162
Item 32: Beware of Memory Management with Exception-Safe Code 165
Item 33: Use Weak References to Avoid Retain Cycles 168
Item 34: Use Autorelease Pool Blocks to Reduce High-Memory Waterline 173
Item 35: Use Zombies to Help Debug Memory-Management Problems 177
Item 36: Avoid Using retainCount 183
Chapter 6: Blocks and Grand Central Dispatch 187
Item 37: Understand Blocks 188
Item 38: Create typedefs for Common Block Types 194
Item 39: Use Handler Blocks to Reduce Code Separation 197
Item 40: Avoid Retain Cycles Introduced by Blocks Referencing the Object Owning Them 203
Item 41: Prefer Dispatch Queues to Locks for Synchronization 208
Item 42: Prefer GCD to performSelector and Friends 213
Item 43: Know When to Use GCD and When to Use Operation Queues 217
Item 44: Use Dispatch Groups to Take Advantage of Platform Scaling 220
Item 45: Use dispatch_once for Thread-Safe Single-Time Code Execution 225
Item 46: Avoid dispatch_get_current_queue 226
Chapter 7: The System Frameworks 233
Item 47: Familiarize Yourself with the System Frameworks 233
Item 48: Prefer Block Enumeration to for Loops 236
Item 49: Use Toll-Free Bridging for Collections with Custom Memory-Management Semantics 243
Item 50: Use NSCache Instead of NSDictionary for Caches 248
Item 51: Keep initialize and load Implementations Lean 252
Item 52: Remember that NSTimer Retains Its Target 258
Index 265
