Is it necessary, or even good practice, to create properties for all iVars?

Question

If an ivar is to be used globally within the class, but will never be accessed by other classes, are we still supposed to use properties?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 13 '12 at 05:10

3

It is generally a good idea, as the generated accessors will take care of things like memory management and KVO for you. You can put the property in a class extension so other classes can't use it.

answered Mar 13 '12 at 05:10

Chuck

234,037
30
302
389

So I guess it's not "necessary" but "good practice". I was using properties for everything but I noticed in apple example code some iVars are not declared as properties. I couldn't find any convention behind their choices. – TijuanaKez Mar 13 '12 at 05:18
Yes. The memory management benefits for objects in non-ARC environments is the big one, because it's just so easy to flub that when you don't concentrate that responsibility in a method. – Chuck Mar 13 '12 at 05:22
I would also mention that if your code contains `@private` directive for your iVars, you're probably doing something wrong. – Holly Oct 19 '13 at 19:00

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 13 '12 at 05:14

For me, it depends on what the instance variable will be used for.

If it's an object representing some data, then I will always use a property.

If it's just a simple BOOL for some internal bookkeeping by a couple of methods in the class, then I won't create a property for it.

Is it necessary, or even good practice, to create properties for all iVars?

2 Answers2