IBOutlet is nil inside custom UIView (Using STORYBOARD)

Question

I have a custom UIView class. Inside it I have declared an IBOutlet property for UIImageView.

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface SettingItem : UIView{

}

@property (strong, nonatomic) IBOutlet UIImageView *myImage;

@end

Now i am using storyboard. There is a viewcontroller. I dragged UIView to viewcontroller. I dragged one UIImageView as a subview of above UIView. I set the "SettingItem" class to UIView from storyboard. I connected the outlet to myImage by normal dragging from outlets of SettingItem from utilities window.

---

SettingItem implementation

#import "SettingItem.h"

@implementation SettingItem

- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame
{
    self = [super initWithFrame:frame];
    if (self) {
        // Initialization code
        [self baseInit];
    }
    return self;
}

-(id) initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder{
    self = [super initWithCoder:aDecoder];
    if (self) {
        // Initialization code
        [self baseInit];
    }
    return self;
}

- (void) baseInit{
    NSLog(@"myImage %@"self.myImage);
}

/*
// Only override drawRect: if you perform custom drawing.
// An empty implementation adversely affects performance during animation.
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect
{
    // Drawing code
}
*/

@end

Now my problem is myImage is always nil, above NSLog just print (null) for the outlet. I checked the view in storyboard and checked its outlet reference and its pointing to myImage. I am missing something. I googled for the help but couldn't find any solution.

Can you please point out what am i doing wrong ?

Answer 1

Override awakeFromNib in your view - this is the first lifecycle method to be called after the IBOutlets have been assigned and is the right place for your code.

Answer 2

initialize them in awakeFromNib:

- (void)awakeFromNib
{
    //init code
}

Answer 3

I just had the exact same problem and the solution is really easy:

You're accessing myImage to soon - that's it.

Withing -(id) initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder{ and - (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame the UIView is not already drawed. So myImage is not initalized yet.

You can test it if you add a UIButton and an IBAction and do something like this:

- (IBAction)buttonClicked:(id)sender {
    NSLog(@"%@",myImage);
}

And you'll see how myImage is not nil anymore.