IBOutlet is nil inside custom UIView (Using STORYBOARD)

Question

I have a custom UIView class. Inside it I have declared an IBOutlet property for UIImageView.

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface SettingItem : UIView{

}

@property (strong, nonatomic) IBOutlet UIImageView *myImage;

@end

Now i am using storyboard. There is a viewcontroller. I dragged UIView to viewcontroller. I dragged one UIImageView as a subview of above UIView. I set the "SettingItem" class to UIView from storyboard. I connected the outlet to myImage by normal dragging from outlets of SettingItem from utilities window.

---

SettingItem implementation

#import "SettingItem.h"

@implementation SettingItem

- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame
{
    self = [super initWithFrame:frame];
    if (self) {
        // Initialization code
        [self baseInit];
    }
    return self;
}

-(id) initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder{
    self = [super initWithCoder:aDecoder];
    if (self) {
        // Initialization code
        [self baseInit];
    }
    return self;
}

- (void) baseInit{
    NSLog(@"myImage %@"self.myImage);
}

/*
// Only override drawRect: if you perform custom drawing.
// An empty implementation adversely affects performance during animation.
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect
{
    // Drawing code
}
*/

@end

Now my problem is myImage is always nil, above NSLog just print (null) for the outlet. I checked the view in storyboard and checked its outlet reference and its pointing to myImage. I am missing something. I googled for the help but couldn't find any solution.

Can you please point out what am i doing wrong ?

Solution 1

Override awakeFromNib in your view - this is the first lifecycle method to be called after the IBOutlets have been assigned and is the right place for your code.

Solution 2

initialize them in awakeFromNib:

- (void)awakeFromNib
{
    //init code
}

Solution 3

I just had the exact same problem and the solution is really easy:

You're accessing myImage to soon - that's it.

Withing -(id) initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder{ and - (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame the UIView is not already drawed. So myImage is not initalized yet.

You can test it if you add a UIButton and an IBAction and do something like this:

- (IBAction)buttonClicked:(id)sender {
    NSLog(@"%@",myImage);
}

And you'll see how myImage is not nil anymore.

Comments

[padam thapa]

then how am i supposed to connect outlet to it from storyboard since property is not visible anymore ?

[OnkaPlonka]

if you click on the status bar of the view and then go to the connections inspector then link it

[padam thapa]

Thanks but still getting null

[padam thapa]

viewWillAppear doesn't belong to UIView, is it ? Its in UIViewController.

[Fabio Poloni]

@OnkaPlonka You're wrong. The IBOutlet in the @property-declaration does mean, it's available in the UIStoryBoard. You shouldn't use @interface Class : SuperClass { IBOutlet ... } anymore.

[Fabio Poloni]

@OnkaPlonka Of course it's not wrong but it's not the solution.

[cbowns]

Those two declarations are, firstly, equivalent with respect to their ivar storage (modulo the ivar's name: in the first one, the property will be auto-synthesized to _myImage, whereas the second one is named myImage), but second and more importantly, this has nothing to do with the question being asked.

[lagos]

But you are not answering his question.

[MANIAK_dobrii]

Short: this is the only correct answer here, others should be wrapped into lead cover and sent to space. Long: Oh, how I hope when I'm going to ask anything on SO, there would be somebody like @Oly to provide the only reasonable and correct answer. Other answers are so rubbish, that it just demonstrates absence of required knowledge. Please, be more like Oly and less like the rest in this thread.

[Oly Dungey]

@MANIAK_dobrii You've just cheered up my day, I've just returned to work after a horrible accident last year and needed some encouragement ;-)

[Mehul Thakkar]

In awakefromNib, it is still getting null values, i have searched many things on stackoverflow, and answer i got at many links is that content is lazy loaded, so in awakefromnib, you can have iboutlets values null