Objective-C

Chapter 11. Understanding How the Frameworks Fit Together

In This Chapter

• Explaining frameworks

• Learning where Foundation fits into other frameworks

• Learning how to add frameworks to your projects

When working with Objective-C on MacOS X, iPhone, and iPad, the reusable libraries provided by the operating system are typically packaged as frameworks. These frameworks bundle together header files, documentation, and dynamic libraries to present a package containing all of the information and data necessary for using the code within them.

How exactly frameworks are implemented is relatively platform specific. A framework could be packaged as a dynamic library like the one I just described, as is the case in MacOS X, or it could be a static library, as is the case occasionally on Linux or BSD. Because of the platform centric nature of the framework bundle itself, a detailed explanation of how to build a framework is beyond the scope of a language-centric book such as this one. However, that said, it is important that you understand what some of the key frameworks that are typically used with Objective-C are and what they provide. Therefore, this chapter focuses on giving you an overview of the available frameworks on some of the platforms upon which you can build your Objective-C programs. For reasons that will become obvious later, writing a strictly language-centric Objective-C book without including extensive coverage of at least the Foundation framework is almost impossible. Because of ...