Name conventions for xibs

Question

I've been looking at the sample code and sometimes Apple names xib files ClassNameView and sometimes ClassNameViewController. The ClassName is always a UIViewController or UITableViewController, which had me wonder what convention to use when naming a xib. I would think View as it's not really the ViewController, but curious on what the convention is or at least what your naming conventions are for xibs.

Answer 1

I use ClassNameView since the xib represents the view, not the view controller. I don't think there is a generally accepted convention.

Answer 2

CocoaTouch supports both conventions, with a preference for the shorter form ClassNameView, as per the nib loading process described below when a nib name is not specified (from the UIViewController documentation, under nibName):

Specifically, it looks (in order) for a nib file with one of the following names:

1. If the view controller class name ends with the word “Controller”, as in MyViewController, it looks for a nib file whose name matches the class name without the word “Controller”, as in MyView.nib.

2. It looks for a nib file whose name matches the name of the view controller class. For example, if the class name is MyViewController, it looks for a MyViewController.nib file.

So as other have said, it's a matter of preference! I personally like the shorter version but can see the logic in both.

Answer 3

I generally use ClassNameViewController since I set the File's Owner to that class and it seems strange to name the file after something that's a sub-object of the object the nib represents. Like you, I have seen it both ways in sample code and I did see a blog post about Cocoa explicitly looking for ClassNameView in some cases, but I haven't had any problems using ClassNameViewController.