I am trying to change the class of objects created with a nib with the iPhone SDK.
The reason for this is; i dont know until runtime what the class is that i want the nib object to be (though they will have the same UIView based super class), and i dont want to create a different nib for every eventuality - as the .nib will be the same for each, apart from the class of one object.
I have been successful, with a couple of methods, but either have some knock on effects or am unsure of how safe the methods I have used are:
Method 1: Override alloc, on the super class and set a c variable to the class I require:
+ (id) alloc {
if (theClassIWant) {
id object = [theClassIWant allocWithZone:NSDefaultMallocZone()];
theClassIWant = nil;
return object;
}
return [BaseClass allocWithZone:NSDefaultMallocZone()];
}
this works well, and i assume is 'reasonably' safe, though if I alloc a subclass myself (without setting 'theClassIWant') - an object of the base class is created. I also dont really like the idea of overriding alloc...
Method 2: use object_setClass(self,theClassIWant) in initWithCoder (before calling initWithCoder on the super class):
- (id) initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder {
if (theClassIWant) {
// the framework doesn't like this:
//[self release];
//self = [theClassIWant alloc];
// whoa now!
object_setClass(self,theClassIWant);
theClassIWant = nil;
return [self initWithCoder:aDecoder];
}
if (self = [super initWithCoder:aDecoder]) {
...
this also works well, but not all the subclasses are necessarily going to be the same size as the super class, so this could be very unsafe! To combat this i tried releasing and re-allocing to the correct type within initWithCoder, but i got the following error from the framework:
"This coder requires that replaced objects be returned from initWithCoder:"
dont quite get what this means! i am replacing an object in initWithCoder...
Any comments on the validity of these methods, or suggestions of improvements or alternatives welcome!
