macOS Clarify @synthesize

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I am slowly working my way through a cocoa tutorial, some questions I have dont appear answered in the book.

Just got to @property and @synthesize - I understand accessors and mutators and realise that this is what they are doing - but am I correct in thinking that if I use this method, all I will ever have is a very simple set and get mechanism?

If I wanted to add anything else to the getter and setter, ie a message logged to the console when a value is set, then I have to explicitly type out the old set and get methods.

There's no way to piggy back extra statements into the 'generated' methods is there?

 

[Catfish_Man]

Unfortunately correct. This also means that the various attributes of properties ('atomic', 'copy', 'retain', etc...) are only automatic for @synthesized accessors. You'll need to ensure that the header matches the implementation for your own.

 

[kainjow]

The way I do this is through key-value observing. That way you keep the full implementation of @properties but still can do things after a value has changed. It's not as flexible though, so it depends on your situation, but has worked for me.

 

[gnasher729]

I am slowly working my way through a cocoa tutorial, some questions I have dont appear answered in the book.

Just got to @property and @synthesize - I understand accessors and mutators and realise that this is what they are doing - but am I correct in thinking that if I use this method, all I will ever have is a very simple set and get mechanism?

If I wanted to add anything else to the getter and setter, ie a message logged to the console when a value is set, then I have to explicitly type out the old set and get methods.

There's no way to piggy back extra statements into the 'generated' methods is there?

Nobody forces you to use @synthesize. @synthesize tells the compiler "insert the code for me right here". Just write the _complete_ implementation of the accessor yourself.

 

[fritx]

Try @dynamic