how to release "delegate" memories in objective-c?

Question

For my project,am creating delegate class. When i assign obj.delegate = self, [self retainCount] get increased by one. So that assigned object having retain count is 2. how should release delegate object and assigned object retaincount is 1?

Regards Srini

Answer 1

It's the normal convention that delegates are not retained. This is mainly because the usual pattern is that the owner of the object is often also its delegate and if the delegate were retained, you'd get a retain cycle.

If you are using a property, declare it like this:

@property (assign) DelegateType delegate; // replace "DelegateType" with whatever type you need

And remove the line in -dealloc that releases the delegate.

If the accessors are synthesised, you are now done. If not, make the accessors assign accessors e.g.

-(DelegateType) delegate
{
    return delegate;
}

-(void) setDelegate: (DelegateType) newValue
{
    delegate = newValue;
}