Initialising a static variable in Objective-C category

Question

I was trying to create a static variable to store a dictionary of images. Unfortunately, the best way I could find to initialise it was to check in each function that used the variable. Since I am creating this variable inside a category, I can't just initialise it inside the initialiser. Is there a neater way of initialising navigationBarImages?

static NSMutableDictionary *navigationBarImages = NULL;

@implementation UINavigationBar(CustomImage)
//Overrider to draw a custom image
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect
{
    if(navigationBarImages==NULL){
        navigationBarImages=[[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
    }
    NSString *imageName=[navigationBarImages objectForKey:self];
    if (imageName==nil) {
        imageName=@"header_bg.png";
    }
    UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed: imageName];
    [image drawInRect:CGRectMake(0, 0, self.frame.size.width, self.frame.size.height)];
}

//Allow the setting of an image for the navigation bar
- (void)setImage:(UIImage*)image
{
    if(navigationBarImages==NULL){
        navigationBarImages=[[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
    }
    [navigationBarImages setObject:image forKey:self];
}
@end

Answer 1

__attribute__((constructor))
static void initialize_navigationBarImages() {
  navigationBarImages = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
}

__attribute__((destructor))
static void destroy_navigationBarImages() {
  [navigationBarImages release];
}

These function will be called automatically when the program starts and ends.

Answer 2

Consider this approach,

static NSMutableDictionary *navigationBarImages()
{
    static NSMutableDictionary *dict = NULL;
    if(dict == NULL)
    {
        dict = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
    }
    return [[dict retain] autorelease];
}

then whenever you woulde use navigationBarImages, replace it with navigationBarImages(), like this:

change

NSString *imageName=[navigationBarImages objectForKey:self];

to

NSString *imageName=[navigationBarImages() objectForKey:self];

If the function call overhead bothers you, maybe use a temporary variable to catch the return of navigationBarImages(),

NSMutableDictionary *dict = navigationBarImages();
[dict doSomething];
[dict doSomething];

The drawback is once you called navigationBarImages(), the instance of NSMutableDictionary got created, then it'll never get chance to dealloc until the end of the program.

Answer 3

All you need is to set your static once at a known point before it is used. For example, you can set an NSApplication delegate and have it do the work in -applicationDidFinishLaunching: