How to make a delegate object accessible throughout a ViewController

Question

I'm trying to get an instance of my AppDelegate accessible to all methods in each ViewController that I have. If I try to declare it with other class variables I get Initializer Element is not a compile-time constant. If I declare it in a method within the ViewController however I am able to use it. I am trying to save integers and floats to properties I have set up in the AppDelegate (a big no-no I know, but this is a project for an introductory class and I'm not expected to get too advanced, especially since everything we've done so far is not compliant with the MVC paradigm). The app uses a toolbar to switch between views using the app's ViewController to load the other ViewControllers as subviews. I was going to put the AppDelegate declaration and update statements in the ViewDidUnload method of each view controller, but I'm not sure that the Views are unloaded whenever they are switched (they're switched by removing the current View from the SuperView and loading the new one as a Subview at index 0). What happens to the views that are not currently being viewed then? Is there a method that detects that that I could implement the AppDelegate declaration and updates into?

I guess ideally I'd like to be able to access the AppDelegate object in any method in my ViewControllers because I have a lot of quantities being updated throughout and would like to have those quantities updated in the AppDelegates values as soon as they happen, since I'm not sure what happens with a View is cleared from SuperView

Thanks in advance everyone

Answer 1

You can access your app delegate via [[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate] from anywhere in your application.

You should never instantiate another copy of the object on your own. The system does this for you at startup.

As for detecting changes, you can override the viewDidDisappear method of UIViewController. (You're correct--in general, they will not be unloaded when switched, and viewDidUnload will not be called)