Objective C array of UIButtons (including taking care of initialization, action, etc.)

Question

I have difficulties with make an array of UI Buttons rather than having many separate ones. I'm trying to create four and have:

ViewController.h:

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface ViewController : UIViewController {
    IBOutlet UIButton *b0;
    IBOutlet UIButton *b1;
    IBOutlet UIButton *b2;
    IBOutlet UIButton *b3;
}

@property (nonatomic, strong) UIButton *b0;
@property (nonatomic, strong) UIButton *b1;
@property (nonatomic, strong) UIButton *b2;
@property (nonatomic, strong) UIButton *b3;

@end

ViewController.m:

- (IBAction)b0Click:(id)sender {
    //Do something
}

- (IBAction)b1Click:(id)sender {
    //Do something
}

- (IBAction)b2Click:(id)sender {
    //Do something
}

- (IBAction)b3Click:(id)sender {
    //Do something
}

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

Define a IBOutletCollection:

@property (nonatomic, strong) IBOutletCollection(UIButton) buttons;

Now connect all your buttons to this collection.

You can now accessing the buttons by:

[self.buttons enumerateObjectsUsingBlock:^ (UIButton* button, NSUInteger index, BOOL* stop) {
//Do stuff here
}];

I must warn you against making assumptions about the order of the buttons inside the array. It is better to give each button a tag, and then in the action method decide which code path to take according to their tag.