Single Thread Object Communication

When objects in a single thread are loosely coupled and need to communicate with each other, Notifications allow you to broadcast messages on a synchronous or asynchronous basis and still retain object independence.

When you implement Store Kit in your application, it is most likely a reasonable assumption that you want to re-use your in-app store in a future iPhone application without rewriting the object(s) that implement the SKPaymentTransactionObserver and SKProductsRequestDelegate protocols. We know that these objects receive asynchronous notifications via the delegate protocol(s) that they implement. So in a nutshell, the object that implements the SKProductsRequestDelegate protocol will receive a response asynchronously when the product identifier request that it previously sent is successfully processed. The payment transaction observer object, which is added as an observer to the payment queue upon application launch, again receives asynchronous notifications when there's stuff to do in the payment queue.

When your transaction observer receives notifications from the payment queue that there are updated transactions, completed transactions, or failures, it is most likely the responsibility of the observer object to process these notifications. The processing of these notifications most likely entails application specific logic. So rather than loading up your transaction observer with application specific logic, the NSNotification center provides a clean way of synchronously or asynchronously(via Notification Queues) notifying other objects within the same thread. There is also an NSDistributedNotificationCenter for broadcasting messages to objects in other threads.

By using the NSNotification center, you can separate the application-specific logic from the observer object that receives notifications from the payment queue. This allows for a cleaner and more modular design, as each object can focus on its specific responsibilities without being tightly coupled to other objects. In addition, the NSNotification center provides a flexible way to communicate between objects within the same thread or across different threads using the NSDistributedNotificationCenter. This makes it easier to reuse and refactor code, which can save time and effort in the long run.