Creating an abstract class in Objective-C

Question

I\'m originally a Java programmer who now works with Objective-C. I\'d like to create an abstract class, but that doesn\'t appear to be possible in Objective-C. Is this poss

Answer 1

Probably this kind of situations should only happen at development time, so this might work:

- (id)myMethodWithVar:(id)var {
   NSAssert(NO, @"You most override myMethodWithVar:");
   return nil;
}

Answer 2

Cocoa doesn’t provide anything called abstract. We can create a class abstract which gets checked only at runtime, and at compile time this is not checked.

Answer 3

A simple example of creating an abstract class

// Declare a protocol
@protocol AbcProtocol <NSObject>

-(void)fnOne;
-(void)fnTwo;

@optional

-(void)fnThree;

@end

// Abstract class
@interface AbstractAbc : NSObject<AbcProtocol>

@end

@implementation AbstractAbc

-(id)init{
    self = [super init];
    if (self) {
    }
    return self;
}

-(void)fnOne{
// Code
}

-(void)fnTwo{
// Code
}

@end

// Implementation class
@interface ImpAbc : AbstractAbc

@end

@implementation ImpAbc

-(id)init{
    self = [super init];
    if (self) {
    }
    return self;
}

// You may override it    
-(void)fnOne{
// Code
}
// You may override it
-(void)fnTwo{
// Code
}

-(void)fnThree{
// Code
}

@end

Answer 4

Another alternative

Just check the class in the Abstract class and Assert or Exception, whatever you fancy.

@implementation Orange
- (instancetype)init
{
    self = [super init];
    NSAssert([self class] != [Orange class], @"This is an abstract class");
    if (self) {
    }
    return self;
}
@end

This removes the necessity to override init

Answer 5

I usually just disable the init method in a class that I want to abstract:

- (instancetype)__unavailable init; // This is an abstract class.

This will generate an error at compile time whenever you call init on that class. I then use class methods for everything else.

Objective-C has no built-in way for declaring abstract classes.

Answer 6

No, there is no way to create an abstract class in Objective-C.

You can mock an abstract class - by making the methods/ selectors call doesNotRecognizeSelector: and therefore raise an exception making the class unusable.

For example:

- (id)someMethod:(SomeObject*)blah
{
     [self doesNotRecognizeSelector:_cmd];
     return nil;
}

You can also do this for init.