iOS Drawing text in a custom view

I am new to iPhone development (and to mac development in general). I am trying to figure out how to draw text in a custom view. I can use the function CGContextShowTextAtPoint to draw the text, but how do I get information about the text extent so I can center or right justify the string?

Thanks

Thanks for the reply. I am aware of UILabel, but I would rather not have to create a label for each piece of text that I wish to display. I was hoping that there would be a mechanism where I could output the text directly to the device context.