Check if subclass overrides a method

Question

Is it possible to check whether a subclass implements a method that exists either in its immediate superclass or in some superclass of its superclass, etc?

E.g. I subclass UIView, to make my custom generic view for my app, and then I subclass this custom view. Now some of my subclasses override some method from UIView and some don't. I only want to call this method if it is actually overridden, I do not want the default UIView method being called.

Is there a way to check this, i.e. with a method similar to respondsToSelector:?

Edit: This question is different from the one asked in Objective-C detect if class overrides inherited method because I do not really know or do not want to care which superclass originally implements the method.

Answer 1

Based on this answer by Mert Buran.

You can create a simple method to check whether a given object overrides a given selector (method):

-(BOOL)checkIfObject:(id)object overridesSelector:(SEL)selector {

    Class objSuperClass = [object superclass];
    BOOL isMethodOverridden = NO;

    while (objSuperClass != Nil) {

        isMethodOverridden = [object methodForSelector: selector] !=
        [objSuperClass instanceMethodForSelector: selector];

        if (isMethodOverridden) {
            break;
        }

        objSuperClass = [objSuperClass superclass];
    }

    return isMethodOverridden;
}

This can be called as follows:

[self checkIfObject:someObject overridesSelector:@selector(someSelector)];

Answer 2

Unfortunately, there is no equivalent to respondsToSelector: that will do precisely this job for you. As you will probably know, respondsToSelector: works in the way that it will return YES as long as the class itself or any of its superclasses implements this method.

But why not just put an empty implementation of the method into your custom subclass, that way you make sure that calling it doesn't have any effect and doesn't call the same method in the superclass. Did you think about this?

Update: While there is no method equivalent to respondsToSelector:, you might want to take a look at the Objective-C Runtime. It's a library that allows you to inspect characteristics of a class during runtime (a bit similar to Java reflections). Check out the reference here.