Correct management of addObserverForName:object:qu

Question

I'm still new to blocks in objective-c and wondering if I have this psuedo code correct. I'm not sure if it's enough to just remove the observer or if i have to call removeObserver:name:object:

-(void) scan {
    Scanner *scanner = [[Scanner alloc] init];
    id scanComplete = [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserverForName:@"ScanComplete" 
                        object:scanner 
                        queue:nil 
                        usingBlock:^(NSNotification *notification){
                            /*
                             do something
                             */
                            [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:scanComplete];
                            [scanner release];
                        }];
    [scanner startScan];
}

Update: I'm receiving intermittent EXC_BAD_ACCESS from this block, so this can't be right.

Answer 1

You should not unregister in the register block. Instead, store the token returned from addObserverForName (in this case, your scanComplete) as an instance variable or in a collection that is an instance variable, and unregister later when you're about to go out of existence (e.g. in dealloc). What I do is keep an NSMutableSet called observers. So:

id ob = [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] 
     addObserverForName:@"whatever" object:nil queue:nil 
     usingBlock:^(NSNotification *note) {
        // ... whatever ...
}];
[self->observers addObject:ob];

And then later:

for (id ob in self->observers)
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:ob];
self->observers = nil;

Answer 2

The scope of the block doesn't have permission to release the scanner object. If you're not using garbage collection, removing the release and making the scanner autorelease ([[[Scanner alloc] init] autorelease]) should do the trick.

You should also be able to safely move the call to removeObserver outside of the block.

For the case of EXC_BAD_ACCESS: Entering bt in the console window after the application crashes will give you a backtrace, and should inform you where the error occurred.

Answer 3

Declare the scanComplete variable before defining the block itself.

The reason why you need to do this is because you're trying to access a variable that doesn't exist within the block at the time of definition since the variable itself has not been assigned yet.

What is EXC_BAD_ACCESS? Well, it's an exception that is thrown when you try to access a reference that doesn't exist. So that is exactly the case in your example.

So if you declare the variable before the block itself, then it should work:

-(void) scan {
    Scanner *scanner = [[Scanner alloc] init];
    __block id scanComplete;
    scanComplete = [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserverForName:@"ScanComplete" 
                        object:scanner 
                        queue:nil 
                        usingBlock:^(NSNotification *notification){
                           /*
                           do something
                           */
                           [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:scanComplete];
                           [scanner release];
                    }];
    [scanner startScan];
}

Answer 4

Apple Document about this method:

The following example shows how you can register to receive locale change notifications.

NSNotificationCenter *center = [NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter];
NSOperationQueue *mainQueue = [NSOperationQueue mainQueue];
self.localeChangeObserver = [center addObserverForName:NSCurrentLocaleDidChangeNotification object:nil
    queue:mainQueue usingBlock:^(NSNotification *note) {

        NSLog(@"The user's locale changed to: %@", [[NSLocale currentLocale] localeIdentifier]);
    }];

To unregister observations, you pass the object returned by this method to removeObserver:. You must invoke removeObserver: or removeObserver:name:object: before any object specified by addObserverForName:object:queue:usingBlock: is deallocated.

NSNotificationCenter *center = [NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter];
[center removeObserver:self.localeChangeObserver];