---
title: "Whats the NSCoder class used for?"  
description: "Whats the NSCoder class used for?"  
author: "Anonymous User"  
published: 2015-07-29  
updated: 2020-09-21  
canonical: https://www.mindstick.com/interview/12740/whats-the-nscoder-class-used-for  
category: "iphone"  
tags: ["iphone", "ios", "objective c"]  
reading_time: 2 minutes  

---

# Whats the NSCoder class used for?

**NSCoder** is an abstractClass which represents a stream of data. They are used in Archiving and Unarchiving objects. NSCoder objects are usually used in a method that is being implemented so that the class conforms to the protocol. (which has something like encodeObject and decodeObject methods in them).

NSCoder operates on objects, scalars, C arrays, structures, and strings, and on pointers to these types. It does not handle types whose implementation varies across platforms, such as union, void *, function pointers, and long chains of pointers. A coder object stores object type information along with the data, so an object decoded from a stream of bytes is normally of the same class as the object that was originally encoded into the stream.

## Answers

### Answer by Anonymous User

**NSCoder** is an abstractClass which represents a stream of data. They are used in Archiving and Unarchiving objects. NSCoder objects are usually used in a method that is being implemented so that the class conforms to the protocol. (which has something like encodeObject and decodeObject methods in them).

NSCoder operates on objects, scalars, C arrays, structures, and strings, and on pointers to these types. It does not handle types whose implementation varies across platforms, such as union, void *, function pointers, and long chains of pointers. A coder object stores object type information along with the data, so an object decoded from a stream of bytes is normally of the same class as the object that was originally encoded into the stream.


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