IOS Dev Intro - Protocols and Delegate

Excerpt from Beginning IOS Programming by Nick Harris

protocols and Delegates


Model-View-Controller is a great high-level programming pattern, 
but to use it in a programming language, you need the tools to 
make it work. Objective-C has these tools. The model layer
is implemented using classes and properties to create reusable 
objects. The view layer is implemented in the Cocoa and Cocoa 
Touch APIs, including reusable views and subviews such as buttons 
and text fields. The controller layer is done by using delegates 
and data sources to facilitate the communication.


Delegates and data sources are used heavily in Objective-C. It’s 
a way of having one part of the software ask for work to be done 
by another part. This fits the MVC design pattern with the 
communication between views and controllers. Because views interact 
only with controllers and never with the model, they need a way of 
asking for model data from the controller. This is the role of the 
data source. When a user interacts with a view, the view needs to 
tell the controller about it. Delegates are used for this role. 
Typically, your controller will perform both of these roles.


A view needs to define all the questions it may ask its data source 
and what type of answer it expects in return. It also needs to 
define all the tasks it may ask the delegate to perform in response 
to user interaction. In Objective-C this is done through protocols. 
You can think of a protocol as a contract between the view and its 
data source or delegate.