iOS get property class

Question

I\'m trying to get a list of all the properties of an unknown class and the class of every property. By the moment I get a list of all the properties of an object(I do it recurs

Answer 1

Just made a tiny method for this.

// Simple as.
Class propertyClass = [customObject classOfPropertyNamed:propertyName];

Could be optimized in many ways, but I love it.

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Implementation goes like:

-(Class)classOfPropertyNamed:(NSString*) propertyName
{
    // Get Class of property to be populated.
    Class propertyClass = nil;
    objc_property_t property = class_getProperty([self class], [propertyName UTF8String]);
    NSString *propertyAttributes = [NSString stringWithCString:property_getAttributes(property) encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
    NSArray *splitPropertyAttributes = [propertyAttributes componentsSeparatedByString:@","];
    if (splitPropertyAttributes.count > 0)
    {
        // xcdoc://ios//library/prerelease/ios/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/ObjCRuntimeGuide/Articles/ocrtPropertyIntrospection.html
        NSString *encodeType = splitPropertyAttributes[0];
        NSArray *splitEncodeType = [encodeType componentsSeparatedByString:@"\""];
        NSString *className = splitEncodeType[1];
        propertyClass = NSClassFromString(className);
    }
    return propertyClass;
}

It is part of eppz!kit, within a developing object representer called NSObject+EPPZRepresentable.h. It actually does what you are to achieve originally.

// Works vica-versa.
NSDictionary *representation = [customObject dictionaryRepresentation];
CustomClass = [CustomClass representableWithDictionaryRepresentation:representation];

It encodes many types, iterate trough collections, represents CoreGraphics types, UIColors, also represent / reconstruct object references.

---

New version spits you back even C type names and named struct types as well:

NSLog(@"%@", [self typeOfPropertyNamed:@"index"]); // unsigned int
NSLog(@"%@", [self typeOfPropertyNamed:@"area"]); // CGRect
NSLog(@"%@", [self typeOfPropertyNamed:@"keyColor"]); // UIColor

Part of eppz!model, feel free to use method implementations at https://github.com/eppz/eppz.model/blob/master/eppz!model/NSObject%2BEPPZModel_inspecting.m#L111