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Refactoring Legacy Objective-C Code for Better MVC Separation and Code Reusability

πŸ‘€ Views: 86 πŸ’¬ Answers: 1 πŸ“… Created: 2025-09-13
objective-c mvc refactoring Objective-C

I'm attempting to set up I'm trying to figure out Hey everyone, I'm running into an issue that's driving me crazy. I'm stuck on something that should probably be simple. While refactoring an older Objective-C codebase, I've been tasked with improving the separation of concerns, specifically around the MVC architecture. The existing implementation tightly couples the view and the controller, leading to difficulties in testing and reusability. Here's a snippet of the current setup: ```objective-c @interface MyViewController : UIViewController { UILabel *label; UIButton *button; } - (void)buttonTapped; @end @implementation MyViewController - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; button = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeSystem]; [button addTarget:self action:@selector(buttonTapped) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside]; } - (void)buttonTapped { label.text = "Button was tapped!"; } @end ``` The tight coupling between the button action and the view controller makes unit testing almost impossible. I'm exploring the idea of creating a separate handler class that will manage user interactions and model updates. This would ideally allow the view controller to focus solely on UI updates. One approach I considered was using a delegate pattern, but I’m not sure if it’s the best fit for this scenario since it introduces additional complexity. Alternatively, I am contemplating using blocks for callbacks. What are the pros and cons of these approaches in this context? Additionally, community recommendations suggest using protocols to define interfaces for the interaction handlers. Here’s a rough draft of how I envision the new structure: ```objective-c @protocol MyViewControllerDelegate <NSObject> - (void)didTapButton; @end @interface ButtonHandler : NSObject @property (nonatomic, weak) id<MyViewControllerDelegate> delegate; - (void)buttonTapped; @end @implementation ButtonHandler - (void)buttonTapped { [self.delegate didTapButton]; } @end ``` In the view controller, I would implement the delegate to handle the interaction logic. It seems like a solid way to decouple the components, but does this add too much complexity for what I need? Any insights on best practices for this kind of refactoring in Objective-C would be greatly appreciated. Are there specific design patterns or strategies I could apply to make this transition smoother while ensuring maintainability and testability? I'm working on a CLI tool that needs to handle this. The stack includes Objective-C and several other technologies. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Is there a better approach? Am I missing something obvious? I'm using Objective-C 3.10 in this project. I appreciate any insights! Any help would be greatly appreciated!