check if NSNumber is empty

Question

How do I check if a NSNumber object is nil or empty?

OK nil is easy:

NSNumber *myNumber;
if (myNumber == nil)
    doSomething

But if th

Answer 1

It's very common (for me at least) to get an object out of a dictionary, expect that it's going to be an NSNumber and then have it return a nil object. If this happens and you do an intValue it will crash.

What I do is setup nil protection because I'd rather get a default value than a crash.

One way is:

-(int) intForDictionary:(NSDictionary *)thisDict objectForKey: (NSString *)thisKey withDefault: (int)defaultValue
{
    NSNumber *thisNumber = [thisDict objectForKey:thisKey];
    if (thisNumber == nil) {
        return defaultValue;
    }
    return [thisNumber intValue];
}

And I have one just like it for floats. Then you at least get your default value. Another way is to just create a method for nil protection..

-(NSNumber *)nilProtectionForNumber: (NSNumber *)thisNumber withDefault: (NSNumber *)defaultNumber
{
    if (thisNumber) {
        return thisNumber;
    }
    else
        return defaultNumber;
}

That one you'd call like this:

NSNumber *value = [self nilProtectionForNumber:[dict objectForKey:keyThatShouldBeNSNumber] withDefault:[NSNumber numberWithInt:0]];