property retain assign copy nonatomic in Objective-C

Question

As someone that s new to Objective-C can someone give me an overview of the retain  assign  copy and any others I m missing  that follow the  property directive  What are they doing and why would I want to use one over another

User · Answer

After reading many articles I decided to put all the attributes information together         atomic              default   nonatomic   strong retain       default   weak  unsafe unretained   retain   assign              default   unsafe unretained   copy   readonly   readwrite                   default      Below is a link to the detailed article where you can find these attributes   Many thanks to all the people who give best answers here       Variable property attributes or Modifiers in iOS   Here is the Sample Description from Article   atomic  -Atomic means only one thread access the variable static type   -Atomic is thread safe  -but it is slow in performance -atomic is default behavior -Atomic accessors in a non garbage collected environment  i e  when using retain release autorelease  will use a lock to   ensure that another thread doesn t interfere with the correct setting getting of the value  -it is not actually a keyword      Example     property  retain  NSString  name    synthesize name     nonatomic -Nonatomic means multiple thread access the variable dynamic type   -Nonatomic is thread unsafe  -but it is fast in performance -Nonatomic is NOT default behavior we need to add nonatomic keyword in property attribute  -it may result in unexpected behavior  when two different process  threads  access the same variable at the same time    Example    property  nonatomic  retain  NSString  name    synthesize name    Explain   Suppose there is an atomic string property called  name   and if you call  self setName   A   from thread A   call  self setName   B   from thread B  and call  self name  from thread C  then all operation on different thread will be performed serially which means if one thread is executing setter or getter  then other threads will wait  This makes property  name  read write safe but if another thread D calls  name release  simultaneously then this operation might produce a crash because there is no setter getter call involved here  Which means an object is read write safe  ATOMIC  but not thread safe as another threads can simultaneously send any type of messages to the object  Developer should ensure thread safety for such objects   If the property  name  was nonatomic  then all threads in above example - A B  C and D will execute simultaneously producing any unpredictable result  In case of atomic  Either one of A  B or C will execute first but D can still execute in parallel    strong  iOS4   retain   -it says  keep this in the heap until I don t point to it anymore  -in other words   I am the owner  you cannot dealloc this before aim fine with that same as retain  -You use strong only if you need to retain the object  -By default all instance variables and local variables are strong pointers  -We generally use strong for UIViewControllers  UI item s parents  -strong is used with ARC and it basically helps you   by not having to worry about the retain count of an object  ARC automatically releases it for you      when you are done with it Using the keyword strong means that you own the object    Example    property  strong  nonatomic  ViewController  viewController    synthesize viewController     weak  iOS4   unsafe unretained   -it says  keep this as long as someone else points to it strongly  -the same thing as assign  no retain or release -A  weak  reference is a reference that you do not retain  -We generally use weak for IBOutlets  UIViewController s Childs  This works because the child object only   needs to exist as long as the parent object does  -a weak reference is a reference that does not protect the referenced object from collection by a garbage collector  -Weak is essentially assign  a unretained property  Except the when the object is deallocated the weak pointer is automatically set to nil   Example     property  weak  nonatomic  IBOutlet UIButton  myButton    synthesize myButton    Strong  amp  Weak Explanation  Thanks to BJ Homer   Imagine our object is a dog  and that the dog wants to run away  be deallocated   Strong pointers are like a leash on the dog  As long as you have the leash attached to the dog  the dog will not run away  If five people attach their leash to one dog   five strong pointers to one object   then the dog will not run away until all five leashes are detached  Weak pointers  on the other hand  are like little kids pointing at the dog and saying  Look  A dog   As long as the dog is still on the leash  the little kids can still see the dog  and they ll still point to it  As soon as all the leashes are detached  though  the dog runs away no matter how many little kids are pointing to it  As soon as the last strong pointer  leash  no longer points to an object  the object will be deallocated  and all weak pointers will be zeroed out  When we use weak  The only time you would want to use weak  is if you wanted to avoid retain cycles   e g  the parent retains the child and the child retains the parent so neither is ever released     retain   strong -it is retained  old value is released and it is assigned -retain specifies the new value should be sent -retain on assignment and the old value sent -release -retain is the same as strong  -apple says if you write retain it will auto converted work like strong only  -methods like  alloc  include an implicit  retain    Example    property  nonatomic  retain  NSString  name    synthesize name     assign  -assign is the default and simply performs a variable assignment -assign is a property attribute that tells the compiler how to synthesize the property s setter implementation -I would use assign for C primitive properties and weak for weak references to Objective-C objects    Example    property  nonatomic  assign  NSString  address    synthesize address     unsafe unretained  -unsafe unretained is an ownership qualifier that tells ARC how to insert retain release calls -unsafe unretained is the ARC version of assign    Example    property  nonatomic  unsafe unretained  NSString  nickName    synthesize nickName     copy -copy is required when the object is mutable  -copy specifies the new value should be sent -copy on assignment and the old value sent -release  -copy is  like retain returns an object which you must explicitly release  e g   in dealloc  in non-garbage collected environments  -if you use copy then you still need to release that in dealloc  -Use this if you need the value of the object as it is at this moment  and you don t want that value to reflect any changes made by other   owners of the object  You will need to release the object when you are finished with it because you are retaining the copy    Example    property  nonatomic  copy  NSArray  myArray    synthesize myArray

User · Answer

The article linked to by MrMage is no longer working  So  here is what I ve learned in my  very  short time coding in Objective-C   nonatomic vs  atomic -  atomic  is the default  Always use  nonatomic   I don t know why  but the book I read said there is  rarely a reason  to use  atomic    BTW  The book I read is the BNR  iOS Programming  book    readwrite vs  readonly -  readwrite  is the default  When you  synthesize  both a getter and a setter will be created for you  If you use  readonly   no setter will be created  Use it for a value you don t want to ever change after the instantiation of the object   retain vs  copy vs  assign    assign  is the default  In the setter that is created by  synthesize  the value will simply be assigned to the attribute  My understanding is that  assign  should be used for non-pointer attributes   retain  is needed when the attribute is a pointer to an object  The setter generated by  synthesize will retain  aka add a retain count  the object  You will need to release the object when you are finished with it   copy  is needed when the object is mutable  Use this if you need the value of the object as it is at this moment  and you don t want that value to reflect any changes made by other owners of the object  You will need to release the object when you are finished with it because you are retaining the copy

User · Answer

prefer this links about properties in objective-c in iOS     https   techguy1996 blogspot com 2020 02 properties-in-objective-c-ios html

User · Answer

Atomic property can be accessed by only one thread at a time  It is thread safe  Default is atomic  Please note that there is no keyword  atomic  Nonatomic means multiple thread can access the item  It is thread unsafe  So one should be very careful while using atomic  As it affect the performance of your code

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Before you know about the attributes of  property  you should know what is the use of  property     property offers a way to define the information that a class is intended to encapsulate  If you declare an object variable using  property  then that object variable will be accessible to other classes importing its class   If you declare an object using  property in the header file  then you have to synthesize it using  synthesize in the implementation file  This makes the object KVC compliant  By default  compiler will synthesize accessor methods for this object  accessor methods are   setter and getter    Example   h   interface XYZClass   NSObject  property  nonatomic  retain  NSString  name   end    m   implementation XYZClass  synthesize name   end   Now the compiler will synthesize accessor methods for name   XYZClass  obj   XYZClass alloc init   NSString  name1  obj name      get  name   obj setName   liza       first letter of  name  becomes capital in setter method    List of attributes of  property  atomic  nonatomic  retain  copy  readonly  readwrite  assign  strong  getter method  setter method  unsafe unretained atomic is the default behavior  If an object is declared as atomic then it becomes thread-safe  Thread-safe means  at a time only one thread of a particular instance of that class can have the control over that object     If the thread is performing getter method then other thread cannot perform setter method on that object  It is slow    property NSString  name    by default atomic   property  atomic NSString  name     explicitly declared atomic     nonatomic  is not thread-safe  You can use the nonatomic property attribute to specify that synthesized accessors simply set or return a value directly  with no guarantees about what happens if that same value is accessed simultaneously from different threads    For this reason  it   s faster to access a nonatomic property than an atomic one         property  nonatomic NSString  name        retain is required when the attribute is a pointer to an object     The setter method will increase retain count of the object  so that it will occupy memory in autorelease pool    property  retain NSString  name     copy If you use copy  you can t use retain   Using copy instance of the class will contain its own copy     Even if a mutable string is set and subsequently changed  the instance captures whatever value it has at the time it is set  No setter and getter methods will be synthesized    property  copy  NSString  name    now   NSMutableString  nameString    NSMutableString stringWithString   Liza        xyzObj name   nameString       nameString appendString   Pizza       name will remain unaffected     readonly If you don t want to allow the property to be changed via setter method  you can declare the property readonly    Compiler will generate a getter  but not a setter    property  readonly  NSString  name     readwrite is the default behavior  You don t need to specify readwrite attribute explicitly     It is opposite of readonly    property  readwrite  NSString  name     assign will generate a setter which assigns the value to the instance variable directly  rather than copying or retaining it  This is best for primitive types like NSInteger and CGFloat  or objects you don t directly own  such as delegates     Keep in mind retain and assign are basically interchangeable when garbage collection is enabled    property  assign  NSInteger year     strong is a replacement for retain     It comes with ARC    property  nonatomic  strong  AVPlayer  player      getter method If you want to use a different name for a getter method  it   s possible to specify a custom name by adding attributes to the property    In the case of Boolean properties  properties that have a YES or NO value   it   s customary for the getter method to start with the word    is      property  getter isFinished  BOOL finished     setter method If you want to use a different name for a setter method  it   s possible to specify a custom name by adding attributes to the property    The method should end with a colon    property setter   boolBool   BOOL finished     unsafe unretained There are a few classes in Cocoa and Cocoa Touch that don   t yet support weak references  which means you can   t declare a weak property or weak local variable to keep track of them  These classes include NSTextView  NSFont and NSColorSpace etc  If you need to use a weak reference to one of these classes  you must use an unsafe reference     An unsafe reference is similar to a weak reference in that it doesn   t keep its related object alive  but it won   t be set to nil if the destination object is deallocated    property  unsafe unretained  NSObject  unsafeProperty    If you need to specify multiple attributes  simply include them as a comma-separated list  like this    property  readonly  getter isFinished  BOOL finished

[ios] @property retain, assign, copy, nonatomic in Objective-C

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