Which storage (weak or strong) for the elements underneath the "main" View in iOS7

Question

After reading really many books and docs on iOS programming I am still confused - which Storage type (weak or strong) to select, when control dragging from a UI element underneath the "main" View? (and by "main" I think I mean the UIView assigned to the view property of the ViewController):

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For example I'm trying to recreate the example iOS SDK: Working with NSUserDefaults by Mr. Jeroen van Rijn - with Xcode 5.0.2 and iOS7.

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His code is lacking the weak/strong specifiers and I wonder, which would be correct here?

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
@interface ContactViewController : UIViewController {
    IBOutlet UIImageView *contactImageView;
    IBOutlet UITextField *firstNameTextField;
    IBOutlet UITextField *lastNameTextField;
    IBOutlet UITextField *ageTextField;
}
- (IBAction)save:(id)sender;
- (IBAction)chooseImage:(id)sender;
@end

IBOutlets should be defined as weak, as they will be retained by the View that creates them. Your ViewController just wants the reference and doesn't need to retain them again — Tim, Dec 19 '13 at 15:06

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 19 '13 at 15:18

1

Because that view is already retained by the view that creates them (the one you set in the interface builder) you don't need to retain them again, so you have to choose weak, not strong.

answered Dec 19 '13 at 15:18

Antonio MG

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Thanks, too bad Xcode 5 suggests "strong" when I control drag in assistant mode. – Alexander Farber Dec 19 '13 at 17:19

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 19 '13 at 15:20

You don't need outlet for the view in this example. You can access it like:

self.view

in your ContactViewController or like:

ContactViewController *contact = [[ContactViewController alloc] init];
contact.view

from other view controller. However for your outlets you should you weak.

Which storage (weak or strong) for the elements underneath the "main" View in iOS7

2 Answers2