Best way to define private methods for a class in Objective-C

Question

I just started programming Objective-C and, having a background in Java, wonder how people writing Objective-C programs deal with private methods.

I understand there may be several conventions and habits and think about this question as an aggregator of the best techniques people use dealing with private methods in Objective-C.

Please include an argument for your approach when posting it. Why is it good? Which drawbacks does it have (that you know of) and how you deal with them?

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As for my findings so far.

It is possible to use categories [e.g. MyClass (Private)] defined in MyClass.m file to group private methods.

This approach has 2 issues:

1. Xcode (and compiler?) does not check if you define all methods in private category in corresponding @implementation block
2. You have to put @interface declaring your private category in the begin of MyClass.m file, otherwise Xcode complains with a message like "self may not respond to message "privateFoo".

The first issue can be worked around with empty category [e.g. MyClass ()].
The second one bothers me a lot. I'd like to see private methods implemented (and defined) near the end of the file; I do not know if that's possible.

Answer 1

There isn't, as others have already said, such a thing as a private method in Objective-C. However, starting in Objective-C 2.0 (meaning Mac OS X Leopard, iPhone OS 2.0, and later) you can create a category with an empty name (i.e. @interface MyClass ()) called Class Extension. What's unique about a class extension is that the method implementations must go in the same @implementation MyClass as the public methods. So I structure my classes like this:

In the .h file:

@interface MyClass {
    // My Instance Variables
}

- (void)myPublicMethod;

@end

And in the .m file:

@interface MyClass()

- (void)myPrivateMethod;

@end

@implementation MyClass

- (void)myPublicMethod {
    // Implementation goes here
}

- (void)myPrivateMethod {
    // Implementation goes here
}

@end

I think the greatest advantage of this approach is that it allows you to group your method implementations by functionality, not by the (sometimes arbitrary) public/private distinction.