CODEWITHSUNDEEP
objective-c
Hesham
Hesham

Reputation: 5274

Defining a category in the same .h/.m files of another class

Is it a good practice to define a category within the same .h/.m files of another class? I know it will build with no error and be exactly the same as if it was defined separately.

The main reason I want to do this is because I'm working on an open source control and I want it to have a single .h/.m file.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 118

Answers (2)

Sergey Kalinichenko
Sergey Kalinichenko

Reputation: 726579

In general, the biggest problem with combining multiple classes and categories into the same header/implementation is impaired searchability. When a class is in a file with another class, the file name will no longer reflect the fact that the header/implementation contains your other class, making it much harder for others to look for your class.

If your project is small and self-contained, however, the searchability is less of an issue. When there is only one file to search, there is no question of where each particular piece of code is: it's all in that one file. It sounds like your project is both small and self-contained, so I see no problem in placing all code in a single source file if you want it that way.

Another alternative could be placing each class and category in a separate header/implementation pair of files, and then defining a header that includes them all. This would let you keep an ideal project organization, and let your users include a single header to use your component.

Upvotes: 3

Alessandro Vendruscolo
Alessandro Vendruscolo

Reputation: 14877

If you need this category in just one place I’d say that it’s not that bad having the category within the .m file.

Obviously, if you need that category in multiple places, you should definitely move to its own file: the convention is to name it in this way:

BaseClass+categoryName.{h,m}

e.g.:

NSString+reverseString.h
NSString+reverseString.m

Upvotes: 1

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