Giving each subclass its own copy of a class variable

Question

I have the following class in my iOS application (it is like an abstract class from the Java world).

@implementation WSObject

static NSDictionary* _dictionary = nil;
+(NSDictionary*) dictionary {
    if (_dictionary == nil) {
        _dictionary = [NSKeyedUnarchiver unarchiveObjectWithFile:[self localStorePath]];
    }
    return _dictionary;
}

...

@end

I then have multiple classes which implement this above WSObject with the class method dictionary. The problem is, that each of these classes should have their own _dictionary, but they are all sharing the same object from the super class. I could, of course, copy to all the subclasses, but that would break the reusability. Besides this getter, there are other class methods in WSObject which mutate the dictionary. Because of this, there would be a several class methods which should be in every subclass.

How can I solve this in a smart way? Please tell me if my description is insufficient.

Answer 1

In order to give each subclass its own dictionary, store a second dictionary object in your primary dictionary using the class name as the key. For example:

static NSMutableDictionary *_dictionary = nil;

+ (NSDictionary*)dictionary 
{
    if (_dictionary == nil) 
        _dictionary = [[NSKeyedUnarchiver unarchiveObjectWithFile:[self localStorePath]] mutableCopy];

    NSString *key = NSStringFromClass( [self class] );

    if ( [_dictionary objectForKey:key] == nil )
        [_dictionary setObject:[NSMutableDictionary dictionary] forKey:key];

    return [_dictionary objectForKey:key];
}