What we are actually doing with property in code?

Question

First of all I am very new in Objective C and iOS development.

Currently I am trying to use TableView

I have property

@property (strong, nonatomic) IBOutlet UITableView *tableView;//for table view

Now I seen something like this,

-(NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView*)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section
{
    return [data count];
}

What is exact meaning of the code. What I am doing with tableView here, and how name of property and name of message is same, ie tableView .

Answer 1

In first line you are declaring property of an tableview which you create by storyboard.

The goal of the @property directive is to make it easy to create and configure properties by automatically generating these accessor methods. It allows you to specify the behavior of a public property on a semantic level, and it takes care of the implementation details for you.

-(NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView*)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section

{
return [data count];
}

This is a tableview delegate method which define the no of row in a particular section in table view

data is your array name contain element which you want to show in tableview cell

[data count] return the number of row in your table view

for more detail check

property

table view

Answer 2

What I am doing with tableView here

tableView:numberOfRowsInSection: is a method from the UITableViewDatasource Protocole to do simple, the object of type UITableView will do something like it :

[self.delegate tableView:self numberOfRowsInSection:section]

and so, if you do tableView.datasource = self in your viewController , it's this object which will receive the message and so, need to answer to the tableview .

and how name of property and name of message is same, ie tableView.

@property is just an indication for the compiler to create accessors and iVar in your class, that why it seems to do many things at the same time.