Objective-C Tutorials
Learn Objective C - Part 1
Throughout this small series of articles, my aim is to take you from no prior experience with Objective-C to using it confidently in your own applications. This isn't a rush job – so don?t expect to just skim through the basics and be away – we'll be going through not just the bare essentials, but also the best practices you can apply to ensure your code is the best it can be. Let?s jump straight in!
Learn Objective C - Part 2
Why do we have Objective-C? Why not just use the underlying C language? The reason we have Objective-C is to give us an object oriented playground within which to build our applications. OOP is a programming paradigm that attempts to allow developers to think about software design in terms of objects and attributes instead of variables and functions. Specifically, OOP attempts to obtain data abstraction, encapsulation, modularity, polymorphism, and inheritance. The topic of OOP could easily fill a book (or a tutorial series) on its own, so instead I’ll introduce you to the basic principles by way of example.
Learn Objective C - Part 3
A class is a collection of encapsulated data and custom methods. A class may hold many different kinds of data, and the class methods usually (but not always) perform action related to that data. In Objective-C, a class is usually composed of two files: an interface file and an implementation file. The interface file uses the .h file extension by convention and is where the person using the class can quickly find the methods and data members available to the class.
Learn Objective C - Part 4
So far, we’ve looked a lot at theory and the principles and functionality of the language to get a good idea of how it works. Today, we will be making a simple class similar to the car example we looked at in previous parts of this series. Our class will take the details of a car, allowing us to get and set the values held. After today’s example you should be able to create your own classes in Xcode and toy around with them.
Learn Objective C - Part 5
We’re going to look at memory management, an element of Objective-C (and many other languages) that tends to trip up newer programmers. Most scripting languages (such as PHP) take care of memory managaement automatically, but Objective-C requires that we are careful with our use of memory and manually create and release space for our objects.
Learn Objective C - Part 6
In today’s tutorial, you will learn about Categories and how to use them to extend the functionality of Cocoa-Touch classes. This is our final installment in the Learn Objective-C series, so you will also be provided with a quick recap on what we’ve covered so far and then look at what you can do to further your skills as an Objective-C or iPhone application developer.