NSNotificationCenter, Swift and blocks

The conventional way to register observers with NSNotificationCenter is to use the target-action pattern. While this gets the job done, it's inherently not type-safe.

For example, the following Swift snippet will compile perfectly:

    NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserver(self, selector: Selector("itemAdded:"),

      name: MyNotificationItemAdded, object: nil)

even though at runtime it will fail unless self has a method named itemAdded that takes exactly one parameter (leaving off that last colon in the selector will turn this line into a no-op). Plus, this method gives you no way to take advantages of Swift's closures, which would allow the observer to access local variables in the method that adds the observer and would eliminate the need to create a dedicated method to handle the event.

A better way to do this is to use blocks. And NSNotificationCenter does include a block-based API:

    NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserverForName(MyNotificationItemAdded, object: nil, queue: nil) { note in

      // ...

    }

This is much nicer, especially with Swift's trailing closure syntax. There are no method names to be looked up at runtime, we can refer to local variables in the method that registered the observer and we can perform small bits of logic in reaction to events without having to create and name dedicated methods.

The catch comes in resource management. It's very important that an object remove its event observers when it's deallocated, or else NSNotificationCenter will try to invoke methods on invalid pointers.

The traditional target-action method has the one advantage that we can easily handle this requirement with a single call in deinit:

  deinit {

    NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().removeObserver(self)

  }

With the block API, however, since there is no explicit target object, each call to addObserverForName returns "an opaque object to act as observer." So your observer class would need to track all of these objects and then remove them all from the notification center in deinit, which is a pain.

In fact, the hassle of having to do bookkeeping on the observer objects almost cancels out the convenience of using the block API. Frustrated by this situation, I sat down and created a simple helper class, NotificationManager:

class NotificationManager {

  private var observerTokens: [AnyObject] = []

  deinit {

    deregisterAll()

  }

  func deregisterAll() {

    for token in observerTokens {

      NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().removeObserver(token)

    }

    observerTokens = []

  }

  func registerObserver(name: String, block: (NSNotification -> Void)) {

    let newToken = NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserverForName(name, object: nil, queue: nil, usingBlock: block)

    observerTokens.append(newToken)

  }

  

  func registerObserver(name: String, forObject object: AnyObject, block: (NSNotification -> Void)) {

    let newToken = NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserverForName(name, object: object, queue: nil, usingBlock: block)

    

    observerTokens.append(newToken)

  }

}

First, this simple class provides a Swift-specialized API around NSNotificationCenter.  It provides an additional convenience method without an object parameter (rarely used, in my experience) to make it easier to use trailing-closure syntax. But most importantly, it keeps track of the observer objects generated when observers are registered, and removes them when the object is deinit'd.

A client of this class can simply keep a member variable of type NotificationManager and use it to register its observers. When the parent class is deallocated, the deinit method will automatically be called on its NotificationManager member variable, and its observers will be properly disposed of:

class MyController: UIViewController {

  private let notificationManager = NotificationManager()

  

  override init() {

    notificationManager.registerObserver(MyNotificationItemAdded) { note in

      println("item added!")

    }

    

    super.init()

  }

  

  required init(coder: NSCoder) {

    fatalError("decoding not implemented")

  }

}

When the MyController instance is deallocated, its NotificationManager member variable will be automatically deallocated, triggering the call to deregisterAll that will remove the dead objects from NSNotificationCenter.

In my apps, I add a notificationManager instance to my common UIViewController base class so I don't have to explicitly declare the member variable in all of my controller subclasses.

Another benefit of using my own wrapper around NSNotificationCenter is that I can add useful functionality, like group observers: an observer that's triggered when any one of a group of notifications are posted:

struct NotificationGroup {

  let entries: [String]

  

  init(_ newEntries: String...) {

    entries = newEntries

  }

}

extension NotificationManager {

  func registerGroupObserver(group: NotificationGroup, block: (NSNotification -> ()?)) {

    for name in group.entries {

      registerObserver(name, block: block)

    }

  }

}

This can be a great way to easily set up an event handler to run when, for example, an item is changed in any way at all:

   let MyNotificationItemsChanged = NotificationGroup(

      MyNotificationItemAdded,

      MyNotificationItemDeleted,

      MyNotificationItemMoved,

      MyNotificationItemEdited

    )

    notificationManager.registerGroupObserver(MyNotificationItemsChanged) { note in

      // ...

    }