iOS How can I describe a relationship between an object of which another object is a property?

[moonman239]

In the English language, when we want to convey the idea that John is Jane's son, we might say "John is Jane's son". Or, we might say "Jane is John's mother." What we convey directly is how Jane is related to John.

Suppose object A has a property, which is Object B. How can we describe this relationship? Obviously, we can say "object B is a property of object A." Or we could say "Object A has one property, which is Object B." But how can we describe this relationship in a way that resembles the second description of Jane (that she is John's mother)? A few possibilities come to mind: we could call A B's container, or maybe its owner. What other possibilities are there?

 

[waterskier2007]

I may just be totally screwing this up, but I think you can use a weak reference to avoid a retain cycle, so if A is the parent with one->many children, you would have a strong array property that contains the children. You could then have a weak property on the children that points to their 'parent'. This way, if the parent is deallocated, the child is not still hanging on to that reference.

I just got sad thinking about a parent dying or something

 

[mds1256]

I believe the correct term is 'Composition'

https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Obj...#Composition.2C_inheritance.2C_and_delegation

And a common way of expressing this is using the term 'has a'

e.g. car 'has a' driver (where car and driver are objects)

 

[*SteveB*]

I would be inclined to say that if object A had property object B, then A 'holds a reference' to B.

A 'owns' B is usually, but not always accurate (at least, according the terminology I would usually use). I usually think that if one object owns another, then it has a strong reference to that object. A can't really own B if B will still exist after A has been destroyed.

 

[PhoneyDeveloper]

Jane has a son.

A has a B.

 

[moonman239]

I believe the correct term is 'Composition'

https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Obj...#Composition.2C_inheritance.2C_and_delegation

And a common way of expressing this is using the term 'has a'

e.g. car 'has a' driver (where car and driver are objects)

Yes, but I'm kind of looking for a way to fill in the blank:

Y is X's ____.

Example: John is the car's driver.