Parmanoir

When calling an unknown method, Cocoa will try to forward the call using forward invocation. It gives you a chance to handle the unknown method yourself and do whatever you want with it : call a proxy object, change the method name and its params, or just discard the call.

First, decide in methodSignatureForSelector: whether to handle the call or not. If so, you'll need to return a signature describing arguments and return type of the method you'll call in place of the unknown one. To discard the call, just return nil. The signature itself is made up of type encodings, but you don't have to deal with those directly as you can use methodSignatureForSelector: to return the signature of the method you'll actually call.

Then, handle the call in forwardInvocation:. The NSInvocation given as parameter gives you the original selector and its arguments. As a Cocoa method is actually a C function taking instance and selector as its first arguments, the unknown method's arguments actually start from the third argument.

Sample code time ! Here's a standard mutable dictionary ...

id dict = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
			@"John", @"name", 
			[NSNumber numberWithInt:47], @"age", 
			nil];

... that you can get and set on with valueForKey: and setValue:forKey:. As it's a bit verbose, let's use forward invocation to masquerade accessors :

// Call non existent getter - (id)age
NSLog(@"age=%@", [dict age]);
// Set a new age using a non existent setter - (void)setAge:(id)newAge
[dict setAge:[NSNumber numberWithInt:48]];

To accomplish this, we'll add forward invocation to NSDictionary to redirect zero parameter calls to call valueForKey: and one parameter calls (starting with set) to setValue:forKey:.

@implementation NSDictionary (ForwardInvocation)

// Determine if we can handle the unknown selector sel
- (NSMethodSignature *)methodSignatureForSelector:(SEL)sel
{
	id	stringSelector = NSStringFromSelector(sel);
	int	parameterCount = [[stringSelector componentsSeparatedByString:@":"] count]-1;

	// Zero argument, forward to valueForKey:
	if (parameterCount == 0)
		return [super methodSignatureForSelector:@selector(valueForKey:)];

	// One argument starting with set, forward to setValue:forKey:
	if (parameterCount == 1 && [stringSelector hasPrefix:@"set"])
		return [super methodSignatureForSelector:@selector(setValue:forKey:)];

	// Discard the call
	return nil;
}

// Call valueForKey: and setValue:forKey: 
- (void)forwardInvocation:(NSInvocation *)invocation
{
	id	stringSelector = NSStringFromSelector([invocation selector]);
	int	parameterCount = [[stringSelector componentsSeparatedByString:@":"] count]-1;

	// Forwarding to valueForKey:
	if (parameterCount == 0)
	{
		id value = [self valueForKey:NSStringFromSelector([invocation selector])];
		[invocation setReturnValue:&value];
	}
	// Forwarding to setValue:forKey:
	if (parameterCount == 1)
	{
		id value;
		// The first parameter to an ObjC method is the third argument
		// ObjC methods are C functions taking instance and selector as their first two arguments
		[invocation getArgument:&value atIndex:2];

		// Get key name by converting setMyValue: to myValue
		id key = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@", 
				[[stringSelector substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(3, 1)] lowercaseString],
				[stringSelector substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(4, [stringSelector length]-5)]];

		// Set 
		[self setValue:value forKey:key];
	}
}

@end

The downside of this sample is that XCode will complain about unknown methods. Nonetheless, it's nice to see that you can do it.