Managing reference to objects in NSUserDefaults and Arrays trough strings

Quick one guys. I’m trying to force my self to write one blog each day, but.. Today is champions league and I’m tired and … yeah 🙂 So this is gonna be a short one.

Problem: Managing reference to objects in NSUserDefaults and Arrays trough strings.

Description: I was delighted to learn how easy it is to store data in iOS. What I didn’t like was hard-coded strings. Here’s an example how to set variable money in a NSUserDefaults under key “allMoney”:

- (void)resetAllMoney
{
NSNumber* money = [NSNumber numberWithDouble:0];
NSUserDefaults* repository = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults];

[repository setObject:money forKey:@"allMoney"];
[repository synchronize];

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotificationName:@"msgMoneySaved" object:nil];
}

So here’s my nifty solution:

I created a .h file that is basically empty and in it I define all my strings. I just include .h file in classes that use NSUserDetails and Arrays. Here’s an example of my .h file:

#import

#define myNsDefaultsPayCheckAmount		@"initParamPayCheck"
#define myNsDefaultsWorkHoursAmount		@"initParamWorkHours"
#define myNsDefaultsPayCheckType		@"initParamPayCheckType"
#define myNsDefaultsWorkHoursType		@"initParamWorkHourType"
#define myNsDefaultsCurrencyType		@"initParamCurrencyType"
#define myNsDefaultsAllMoney			@"allMoney"

@interface MyStrings : NSObject {}
@end

And now when we include MyString.h in any class we can easily use it like:

[repository setObject:money forKey:myNsDefaultsAllMoney];

One other kind of interesting thing happened while I was refactoring my code. I noticed that I had to change a lot of classes just to adjust to new “string managing” system. I didn’t smell right so I decided to crate a light weight data layer. After that air was nice and fresh, day was brighter and I could swear birds sang better 🙂