Is there a way to use IBOutlet with compound types in IB?

Question

I have a form which has numerous text fields with their associated labels. To avoid code duplication, rather than have something like:
UILabel* nameLabel;
UITextField* nameTextField;
NSString* nameString;
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UILabel* nameLabel;
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UITextField* nameTextField;
@property (copy) NSString* nameString;
where there is no explicit relationship between the various label/text fields etc, it would be nice to be able to have something like:
@interface UserInputField
UILabel* label;
UITextField* textField;
NSString* string;
UserInputField* nameInput;
// Property which links IBOutlet which links directly to nameInput fields.
The problem with this is that in Interface Builder, I can only set the IBOutlet as a property, and not a property of a property, if that makes sense (i.e you cant have something like @property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UILabel* nameInput.label;).
Is there a way to be able to logically group the related items in code and also be able to set individual properties using IBuilder, or am I trying to have my cake and eat it?

Answer 1

m_userName wrote:
Is there a way to be able to logically group the related items in code and also be able to set individual properties using IBuilder, or am I trying to have my cake and eat it?
Yes, but it isn't trivial. You would have to write custom control for it. Here is one of the only sets of custom controls I know of: http://www.brandonwalkin.com/bwtoolkit/
Luckily, source code is included.