Using Foundation_EXPORT correctly - ios

Question

I have a file called Event.h:
#interface Event : NSObject
FOUNDATION_EXPORT NSString * const KP_STATUS_NEW
FOUNDATION_EXPORT NSString * const KP_STATUS_APPROVED
FOUNDATION_EXPORT NSString * const KP_STATUS_DELETED
#property (nonatomic, strong) NSString * name;
#property (nonatomic, strong) NSString * description;
#property (nonatomic, strong) NSString * status
I would like programmers who use my SDK to have access to the STATUS strings especially when setting a status for an Event object. Should I be using FOUNDATION_EXPORT like the above?
So that a programmer can just do
Event * myEvent = [[Event alloc] init];
myEvent.status = STATUS_NEW;
?
Is that the way to do it in objective-c?
By the way KP is the common prefix for the project. Should I be prefixing the status with KP or something else? What's the standard?

Answer 1

You can just use extern, rather than FOUNDATION_EXPORT (which I believe is what it is defined as anyway).
Using a common prefix is a good idea, given the lack of namespaces in Objective-C and this goes double for a class called Event which is a very common name.
So something like this, looks OK to me:
#import "KPEvent.h"
KPEvent * myEvent = [[KPEvent alloc] init];
myEvent.status = KP_STATUS_NEW;
or better still:
myEvent.status = KP_EVENT_STATUS_NEW;
if statuses only relate to the event class.
What you don't explain, is why you cannot use an enum, which is more elegant:
typedef enum {
KP_EVENT_STATUS_NEW,
KP_EVENT_STATUS_APPROVED,
KP_EVENT_STATUS_DELETED
} KpEventStatus;
and you can forget about that extern nonsense.