Access human readable UIElement label from IOS app

Question

I've got a handful of UIViews subclasses as a part of my interface and I'm looking for an easy human readable way to differentiate them in the code -- like the label you set in the "Document" section of the UI editor.

I believe the "Accessibility Label" is exposed, but that doesn't seem like the correct use of that variable.

Am I stuck documenting which Object ID each object has or is there a more intelligible way?

Answer 1

There are lots of ways to do what you want to be done. Here are several of them:

1. @properties

   The first thing that came to my mind are properties. Use your view controller as a storage class by adding following property declarations in your header file:

   @property (nonatomic, weak) IBOutlet UIView *myFantasticView;
   @property (nonatomic, weak) IBOutlet UIView *myGorgeousView;
   ...
   

   Then, just simply connect your views to specific outlets in Interface Builder.

   The only drawback is that you will have to declare a lot of properties which can become a little confusing.

2. Custom runtime attributes (another use of @properties)

   If you're using UIView's subclasses (I assume you do), you can use your UIView subclass and declare an "identifier" property:

   @interface MyView : UIView
   
   @property (nonatomic, strong) NSString *myViewID;
   
   ...
   
   @end
   

   Then, assign this value using code (simple property setting) or in Interface Builder:

   

Now you can identify your views using one of those method. But remember that you can come up with a better, more suitable solution! :)