Using the AppDelegate to share data

Question

I've found a couple of sources that explain how to use the AppDelegate to share data between objects in an iOS application. I've implemented it quite painlessly and it looks like a good approach in my situation. Thinking about what could be done using the AppDelegate, I am wondering where the line should be drawn.

Obviously there are other ways to share data across view controllers, use Singleton objects, and NSUserDefaults. When is it appropriate to use the AppDelegate to share data? In my current situation, I use this approach to store the appleDeviceToken used for push notifications. I use that token when users login or logout of the app.

---

In MyAppDelegate.h I declare the property:

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *appleDeviceToken;

In MyAppDelegate.m I synthesize appleDeviceToken and then set it:

@synthesize appleDeviceToken;    

------------------------------------------------------

- (void)application:(UIApplication*)application didRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithDeviceToken:(NSData*)deviceToken
{
  NSString *devToken = [[[[deviceToken description]
                          stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"<"withString:@""]
                         stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@">" withString:@""]
                        stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString: @" " withString: @""];
  appleDeviceToken = devToken;
}

Then, in my LoginViewController.m I retrieve it and post it to my server:

  NSString *urlForDeviceTokenPost = [NSString stringWithFormat: @"/api/users/%i/appleDeviceToken", userId];

  MyAppDelegate *appDelegate = (MyAppDelegate*) [UIApplication sharedApplication].delegate;
  NSString *appleDeviceTokenStr = appDelegate.appleDeviceToken;

  AppleDeviceToken *appleDeviceToken = [[AppleDeviceToken alloc] init];
  appleDeviceToken.deviceToken = appleDeviceTokenStr;

  [[RKObjectManager sharedManager] postObject:appleDeviceToken delegate:self];

---

This works great so far, but is this the ideal approach? What else should I know?

Answer 1

When the data and objects are truly global and/or cannot be pushed further down the graph. Storage at this high level is usually not required. As well, your implementations should usually have little to no knowledge about the app delegate -- What's worse than a Singleton? The God-Singleton :) If the app delegate is complex, something's gone wrong. If the app delegate's interface is visible (via #import) to many of your implementations or they message it directly, then something is wrong.

There is no need for an (idiomatic ObjC) singleton -- there is one instance of the app delegate.

NSUserDefaults is for persistence of small values (as the name implies) -- the ability to share is a side effect.

Since the data is already sent into the app delegate by UIKit in this case, that may be a fine place to store the data, or an object representation of. You might also consider forwarding those messages to an appropriate handler. The important point -- In most cases, you would want initialization to flow down the object graph, and to flow from the lowest points possible (e.g. as opposed to many objects referring back to the app delegate). So you might see the app delegate set a top-level view controller's model, but the view controller can then set the models of the view controllers it pushes. This way you will reduce dependencies and control flow, cause and effect will be easier to trace, and you will be able to test it more easily -- free of the context of a massive global state.