Interface Builder and subclassing

Question

Is it possible for me to have the outlet in Interface Builder pointing to a superclass... then in the code using that interface to point to a subclass?
So for example, suppose I'm setting up an interface in Interface Builder with a HumanView (let's say this is a subclass of UIView)... suppose this is like a character in an MMORPG... and you're customizing your chaacter...
and correspondingly in my code I have:
IBOutlet HumanView *character;
But I'm uncertain whether this view will be a female or male character... In my code I have two subclass of HumanView... FemaleView and MaleView... each with its own unique instance variables and methods...
Is it possible for me to decide in the program to have make "character" a FemaleView or MaleView?
Thanks.
Message was edited by: iphonemediaman

Answer 1

Not a problem. I did realize I should add one minor clarification.
1) You can cast a quadralateral to a square in one instance. When you know that actual object (the structure in memory) is a square.
So, to be complete, you can safely cast a the square to a quadralateral all day long -- you know that a square is always a quadralateral. But if you are going to cast the quadralateral to a square, you should make sure you actually have a square object. The compiler will let you do it (might show a warning), but you could end up trying to reference pieces of a square that may not actually be part of the actual object. aka (in pseudo code):
// no issues with these two alloc/inits
Quad *foo = (Quad *)[[Square alloc] init];
Quad *bar = (Quad *)[[Rectangle alloc] init];
// both would return 4
[foo numSides];
[bar numSides];
// if setSideLength is only a method on a Square, then
// first line works fine
[(Square*)foo setSideLength:20.0];
// this line, however, will likely give a compiler warning and then
// an EXC_BAD* error during runtime -- bar is not actually a square
// in memory, despite what you are telling the compiler
[(Square*)bar setSideLength:20.0];
I hope I didn't conuse the issue -- but wanted to clarify.
Cheers,
George