Re: Plug Ins - To Subclass or to Protocol?
Re: Plug Ins - To Subclass or to Protocol?
- Subject: Re: Plug Ins - To Subclass or to Protocol?
- From: Glenn Andreas <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 15:49:04 -0500
At 5:27 PM -0400 7/21/04, Lee Morgan wrote:
I'm working on a app that uses plug-in extensively.
And I need to decided if I should...
Create a class that plug-in developers would sub-class to make a
plug-in?
Or define a protocol that the plug-in will have to follow?
You could do both - declare a protocol, and then make a class
(subclass of NSObject) that adopts that protocol (note that the
calling app would only care about the API defined in the protocol,
and not about any class membership).
The advantage of this is that often times there is additional utility
methods that many plugins might use and by defining the class you can
provided those (but not require the plug-in writer to have to
subclass - it's just useful if they do). This is especially useful
since protocols provide any default behavior (so if a protocol
specifies twenty different routines, most of which have reasonable
default return values, you can provide those in the class).
--
Glenn Andreas email@hidden
mondo blobbo, Cythera, Theldrow, oh my!
Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know
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