Programming iOS 4

Action Connections

An action is a message emitted automatically by a Cocoa UIControl interface object (a control) when the user does something to it, such as tapping the control. The various user behaviors that will cause a control to emit an action message are called events. To see a list of possible events, look at the UIControl class documentation, under “Control Events.” For example, in the case of a UIButton, the user tapping the button corresponds to the UIControlEventTouchUpInside event. In the case of a UITextField, the user typing or deleting or cutting or pasting corresponds to the UIControlEventEditingChanged event. A complete list of UIControls and what events they respond to is provided in Chapter 11.

An action message, then, is a way for your code to respond when the user does something to a control in the interface, such as tapping a button. But your code will not receive an action message from a control unless you explicitly make prior arrangements with that control. You must tell the control what event should trigger an action message, what instance to send the action message to, and what the action message’s name should be. There are two ways to make this arrangement: in code, or in a nib.

Either way, we’re going to need a method for the action message to call. There are three standard signatures for a method that is to be called through an action message; the most commonly used one takes a single parameter, which will be a reference to the object that emitted the ...