Can a UIAlertView pass a string and an int through a delegate - iphone

Question

I have a UIAlertView (several, in fact), and I'm using the method -(void)alertView:(UIAlertView *)alertView clickedButtonAtIndex:(NSInteger)buttonIndex to trigger an action if the user doesn't press cancel. Here's my code:
- (void)doStuff {
// complicated time consuming code here to produce:
NSString *mySecretString = [self complicatedRoutine];
int myInt = [self otherComplicatedRoutine];
UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:#"HERE'S THE STUFF"
message:myPublicString // derived from mySecretString
delegate:nil
cancelButtonTitle:#"Cancel"
otherButtonTitles:#"Go On", nil];
[alert setTag:3];
[alert show];
[alert release];
}
and then what I would like to do would be the following:
- (void)alertView:(UIAlertView *)alertView
clickedButtonAtIndex:(NSInteger)buttonIndex
{
if (buttonIndex == 1) {
if ([alertView tag] == 3) {
NSLog(#"%d: %#",myInt,mySecretString);
}
}
}
However, this method doesn't know about mySecretString or myInt. I definitely don't want to recalculate them, and I don't want to store them as properties since -(void)doStuff is rarely, if ever, called. Is there a way to add this extra information to the UIAlertView to avoid recalculating or storing mySecretString and myInt?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Probably the quickest way to associate an object with an arbitrary other object is to use objc_setAssociatedObject. To use it correctly, you need an arbitrary void * to use as a key; the usual way to do that is to declare a static char fooKey globally in your .m file and use &fooKey as the key.
objc_setAssociatedObject(alertView, &secretStringKey, mySecretString, OBJC_ASSOCIATION_RETAIN);
objc_setAssociatedObject(alertView, &intKey, [NSNumber numberWithInt:myInt], OBJC_ASSOCIATION_RETAIN);
Then use objc_getAssociatedObject to retrieve the objects later.
NSString *mySecretString = objc_getAssociatedObject(alertView, &secretStringKey);
int myInt = [objc_getAssociatedObject(alertView, &intKey) intValue];
Using OBJC_ASSOCIATION_RETAIN, the values will be retained while attached to the alertView and then automatically released when alertView is deallocated.