Cocoa Design Patterns

10. Accessors

The Accessors pattern (also known as “setters and getters”) describes a technique for funneling all access to an object’s properties through well-defined and easy to recognize methods called accessors. Properties are often stored as instance variables but in some cases may be stored a different way or calculated as needed. The Accessors pattern maximizes implementation flexibility while minimizing opportunities for errors. The Accessors pattern provides the following benefits:

• Implementation flexibility. Properties can be stored as instance variables or using other techniques such as the Associative Storage pattern, and the implementation can be changed without breaking other code.

• Minimum maintenance burden. All uses of an ...