Make changes to a number of buttons programatically - ios

Question

I have a view with 10 buttons and I want to use information from an array to set how many of the buttons are visible and what their title is.
The buttons are named option1BTN...option10BTN. The array has different data and size depending on what the user selects and I want to buttons to also reflect the changes.
The code below shows a for-do loop, that sets which button is visible and the button title
for (int i=0; i == [optionsArray count]; i++) {
self.option1BTN.hidden = NO;
[self.option1BTN setTitle:[optionsArray objectAtIndex:i] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
}
How can I change the button name (programatically) in the loop so that depending on the size of the array it changes to option1BTN then option2BTN...optionXBTN and so on?

Answer 1

NSArray *buttons = #[self.option1BTN, self.option2BTN]; // add all the buttons here
for (int i=0; i < buttons.count; i++) {
UIButton *button = buttons[i];
button.hidden = NO;
[button setTitle:[optionsArray objectAtIndex:i] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
// the previous line can be re-written as
//[button setTitle:optionsArray[i] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
}
The difference between this approach and using an IBOutletCollection (as Jeff suggests in his answer) is that the outlet collection does not guarantee the order of its items. If the order is important to you, you need to specify it yourself, like in my code snippet above.

Answer 2

You have two main options, one is to use an IBOutletCollection (if your buttons are created in Interface Builder). Each UIButton will be stored in the collection and you can retrieve the right button in the loop from the collection.
Example:
#property (nonatomic, strong) IBOutletCollection(UIButton) NSArray *buttons;
In IB, you will need to link each button to the IBOutletCollection. Then in your code you will be able to do:
for (int i = 0; i < optionsArray.count; i++) {
UIButton *tempButton = self.buttons[i];
tempButton.hidden = NO;
[tempButton setTitle:[optionsArray objectAtIndex:i] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
tempButton.hidden = NO;
}
The ordering of an IBOutletCollection is not always guaranteed so you may need to use a combination of IBOutletCollection and view tagging (see end of post). For more information on IBOutletCollection's see NSHipster's article
Second option is if your buttons are created programmatically, store each button in an NSMutableArray as you create it:
#property (nonatomic, strong) NSMutableArray *buttons;
UIButton *myButton;
// Do something...
[self.buttons addObject:option1BTN];
Then use the same loop as before.
A third (not recommended option), would be to tag each UIButton and then you can use the viewWithTag: method to retrieve the button. E.g. using the above code again but getting the button with:
UIButton *tempButton = [self.view viewWithTag:i];