Re: Help understanding Apple's approach in documentation a little better.
Re: Help understanding Apple's approach in documentation a little better.
- Subject: Re: Help understanding Apple's approach in documentation a little better.
- From: Ken Thomases <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2015 15:49:44 -0500
On Aug 16, 2015, at 3:09 PM, Alex Zavatone <email@hidden> wrote:
> So, I look at UIStoryboard.h and the docs and see that there are 3 methods. No properties.
> And in using it, I find out that in addition to the 3 methods within UIStoryboard.h, inside a an instance of UIStoryboard, there are a bunch of properties that appear to be stupidly useful.
>
> Like so:
> designatedEntryPointIdentifier
> identifierToNibNameMap
> storyboardFileName
> name
> bundle
> This is really great. I can see if any of my view controllers' scenes' identifiers are misspelled, I can see what Cocoa's using and verify where or if I screwed up somewhere.
>
> This is really useful information.
>
> Why isn't it in Apple's documentation for storyboards?
Because these are private implementation details. They are subject to change without notice. You can't rely on them in any shipping code.
> Is it in Apple's documentation for storyboards but I don't know where to look?
>
> If it is, what concept am I missing about understanding Apple's way of documenting their classes that would help me better understand how to look and where to look when researching?
The concept you're missing is the existence of private implementation details.
> I never would have known about these unlisted (yet accessible and valuable) properties unless I used a special tool to show what's in each object that derives from NSObject.
Because you weren't supposed to know about them. That's why they're unlisted.
> That feels really really, um, deceiving (for lack of a better term).
The fact that classes can have private details is deceiving? Or the fact that Objective-C's run time allows introspection that reveals them?
> Am I doing it wrong?
Yes. If it's not in the documentation or headers, you shouldn't be using it (except for recreational/educational exploration or debugging).
Regards,
Ken
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