Awesome

About this class

This category helps you add KVO using blocks to make it easier to use and make your code more readable.

Associate a Objective-C block to a keyPath, and your block will be executed each time the value of the KeyPath is changed to let you do whatever you want. No need to centralize everything in -(void)observeValueForKeyPath:ofObject:change:context:, and no need for removeObserver:forKeyPath: anymore either as the observer blocks are automatically removed when the object is deallocated!

Usage examples

Example 1: observing a CGRect property

[self onKeyPathValueChange:@"frame"
 execute:^(id obj, NSString* kp, id old, id new)
 {
    if (![old isEqual:new])
    {
      NSLog(@"The frame changed from %@ to %@", old, new);
      CGRect newFrame = [new CGRectValue];
      ...
    } else {
      NSLog(@"The frame property was reaffected to the same CGRect value %@", new);
    }
 }];

Example 2: Observing an UIColor object and using a composite keyPath

[self onKeyPathValueChange:@"view.backgroundColor"
 execute:^(id obj, NSString* kp, id old, id new)
 {
    if (old != new)
    {
      NSLog(@"The view background color has been changed");
    }
 }];

Additional note: avoid retain cycles

Be careful to avoid retain cycles when using this helper method (as with any other usage of blocks retained by self).

Especially, the blocks you provide to onKeyPathValueChange:execute: are retained by self, so you should not use self directly in the block to avoid self to be retained by the block and creating a retain cycle.

Instead, you should declare a weak non-retaining reference to self like this before your block:

__block __weak typeof(self) weakSelf = self;

And use weakSelf instead of self in the block body, so that self won't be retained by the block.