AkitaOnRails

It’s a Unix System!

That’s when the obvious thing came to me: Objective-C is nothing more than a superset of C, so anything that is compatible with C is automatically compatible with Objective-C. More than that, the iOS is a Unix System! Meaning that it has all the goodies of Posix support.

So, how do I get C-compatible strftime? Easy:

#import "time.h"
...
- (NSString*) toFormattedString:(NSString*)format {
    time_t unixTime = (time_t) [self timeIntervalSince1970];
    struct tm timeStruct;
    localtime_r(&unixTime, &timeStruct);
    
    char buffer[30];
    strftime(buffer, 30, [[NSDate formatter:format] cStringUsingEncoding:[NSString defaultCStringEncoding]], &timeStruct);
    NSString* output = [NSString stringWithCString:buffer encoding:[NSString defaultCStringEncoding]]; 
    return output;
}

Reference: NSDate+helpers.m

Now follow each line to understand it:

• At line 4 it is returning the current time represented as the number of seconds since 1970. That method actually returns a NSTimeInterval which is a number that is essentially the same as the C-equivalent time_t
• At line 6 the C function localtime_r converts the unitTime number into the C-structure timeStruct
• At line 9 we call a custom method I created called formatter that just returns a strftime compatible string format. The Obj-C string (when we create using the “@” symbol) is an object that we must convert to an array of chars using the cStringUsingEncoding:. C functions don’t understand Obj-C string, hence the conversion. Then we finally call the strftime itself that will store the result in the buffer array of char that we declared before.
• At line 10 we now do the reverse and convert the resulting C-string (array of chars) back into an Obj-C String.

Now this is too nice. I have added a few other helper methods that now allows me to use it like this:

it(@"should convert the date to the rfc822 format", ^{
    [[[ref toFormattedString:@"rfc822"] should] equal:@"Fri, 01 Jan 2010 10:15:30"];
});

Reference: DateSpec.m

And the “rfc822” string will just be internally converted to @"%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S" by the formatter: selector in the NSDate class.

Now, to add Ruby 1.9-level regular expression you can go straight to the source and use the original C-based Oniguruma itself, exactly what Ruby does. There several ways to integrate a C library into your Cocoa project, but someone already did all the hard work. Satoshi Nakagawa wrote an Obj-C wrapper called CocoaOniguruma that makes it dead easy to integrate into your project.

There are several ways to integrate an external library into your project, the easier way (albeit, not exactly the best) that I am showing here is by creating a new Static Library Target within my project, called CocoaOniguruma:

It will create a new Group called CocoaOniguruma in your project. Than you just add all the files from CocoaOniguruma’s core folder to that group, select the new target and all the source files and headers will be properly added to the project, like this:

Finally, you need to go to the original main target of your application and add both the new target to the target dependencies and the binary .a file to the binary linking section, like this:

With all this set, I recommend you to explore the OnigRegexp.m and OnigRegexpUtility.m, that are Obj-C wrappers to the Oniguruma library. The author already did some very Ruby-like syntax for you to use.

I have wrapped those helpers in my own classes like this:

- (NSString*) gsub:(NSString*)pattern with:(id)replacement {
    if ([replacement isKindOfClass:[NSString class]]) {
        return [self replaceAllByRegexp:pattern with:replacement];        
    } else if ([replacement isKindOfClass:[NSArray class]]) {
        __block int i = -1;
        return [self replaceAllByRegexp:pattern withBlock:^(OnigResult* obj) {
            return (NSString*)[replacement objectAtIndex:(++i)];
        }];        
    }
    return nil;
}

- (NSString*) gsub:(NSString*)pattern withBlock:(NSString* (^)(OnigResult*))replacement {
    return [self replaceAllByRegexp:pattern withBlock:replacement];
}

Reference: NSString+helpers.m

Which now allows me to use this nicer syntax:

context(@"Regular Expressions", ^{
    it(@"should replace all substrings that match the pattern", ^{
        [[[@"hello world, heyho!" gsub:@"h\\w+" with:@"hi"] should] equal:@"hi world, hi!"];
    });

    it(@"should replace each substrings with one corresponding replacement in the array", ^{
        NSArray* replacements = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"hi", @"everybody", nil];
        [[[@"hello world, heyho!" gsub:@"h\\w+" with:replacements] should] equal:@"hi world, everybody!"];
    });
    
    it(@"should replace each substring with the return of the block", ^{
        [[[@"hello world, heyho!" gsub:@"h\\w+" withBlock:^(OnigResult* obj) {
            return @"foo";
        }] should] equal:@"foo world, foo!"];
    });
    
});

Reference: StringSpec.m

If you’re thinking that it is strange for a snippet of Objective-C code to have keyword such as context or it, they come from Kiwi, which builds an RSpec-like BDD testing framework on top of SenTesting Kit for Objective-C development that you should definitely check out. But the code above should be easy enough to understand without even knowing about Kiwi. If you’re a Ruby developer, you will probably notice that the syntax bears some resemblance to what you’re used to already.

So, linking to existing standard C libraries or even third-party open source C libraries is a piece of cake for those simple cases, without having to resort to any “Native Interface” tunneling between virtual machines or any other plumbing. If you want C, they’re there for you to easily integrate and use.

tags: learning beginner apple objective-c english