How can I use NSError in my iPhone App?

Question

I am working on catching errors in my app, and I am looking into using NSError. I am slightly confused about how to use it, and how to populate it.

Answer 1

I'll try summarize the great answer by Alex and the jlmendezbonini's point, adding a modification that will make everything ARC compatible (so far it's not since ARC will complain since you should return id, which means "any object", but BOOL is not an object type).

- (BOOL) endWorldHunger:(id)largeAmountsOfMonies error:(NSError**)error {
    // begin feeding the world's children...
    // it's all going well until....
    if (ohNoImOutOfMonies) {
        // sad, we can't solve world hunger, but we can let people know what went wrong!
        // init dictionary to be used to populate error object
        NSMutableDictionary* details = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];
        [details setValue:@"ran out of money" forKey:NSLocalizedDescriptionKey];
        // populate the error object with the details
        if (error != NULL) {
             // populate the error object with the details
             *error = [NSError errorWithDomain:@"world" code:200 userInfo:details];
        }
        // we couldn't feed the world's children...return nil..sniffle...sniffle
        return NO;
    }
    // wohoo! We fed the world's children. The world is now in lots of debt. But who cares? 
    return YES;
}

Now instead of checking for the return value of our method call, we check whether error is still nil. If it's not we have a problem.

// initialize NSError object
NSError* error = nil;
// try to feed the world
BOOL success = [self endWorldHunger:smallAmountsOfMonies error:&error];
if (!success) {
   // inspect error
   NSLog(@"%@", [error localizedDescription]);
}
// otherwise the world has been fed. Wow, your code must rock.