Questions tagged [declared-property]

A property declaration begins with the keyword @property. You can decorate a property with attributes by using the form @property(attribute [, attribute2, ...]).

You use the @synthesize directive to tell the compiler that it should synthesize the setter and/or getter methods for a property if you do not supply them within the @implementation block. The @synthesize directive also synthesizes an appropriate instance variable if it is not otherwise declared.

Declared properties provide a useful simplification of the usual requirement to explicitly declare all accessor methods, in the following ways (excerpt from Apple documentation on Declared Properties):

• The property declaration provides a clear, explicit specification of how the accessor methods behave.
• The compiler can synthesize accessor methods for you, according to the specification you provide in the declaration.
• Properties are represented syntactically as identifiers and are scoped, so the compiler can detect use of undeclared properties.

Questions relating to the proper use of @property declarations, @synthesize, and the use of dot notation to assign values to these properties (object.propertyName = propertyValue;) should use this tag.

Further reading:

1. The Objective-C Programming Language: Declared Properties