title: Reusable bits of interface, designed in IB
body: <p>I'm making an app that includes the same group of buttons in many different contexts. The buttons send their actions to a different object in each context. I'd like to be able to design a single NSView in IB containing the buttons, and then be able to put copies of that view in many places in my nibs, while maintaining the link, so changes propagate. I'd like to connect each of those instances to different objects, and have the buttons send their actions to whatever object their parent view is connected to.</p>
  
  <p>I thought of creating a subclass of NSView which, when loaded, replaces itself with another view which it loads from a nib file, setting the connected object as File's Owner, but I'm not convinced this is the cleanest method. Here's my implementation of that idea (which -does- work):</p>
  
  <pre><code>@implementation AVNViewFromNib
  
  - (void)awakeFromNib
  {
      //Load the nib whose name is specified by the "nibFile" key
      NSNib* viewNib = [[NSNib alloc] initWithNibNamed:[self valueForKey:@"nibFile"] bundle:[NSBundle mainBundle]];
      NSMutableArray* topLevelObjects = [NSMutableArray new];
      [viewNib instantiateNibWithOwner:relatedObject topLevelObjects:&amp;topLevelObjects];
  
      //Find our replacement view in that nib
      for (id currentObject in topLevelObjects)
      {
          if ([currentObject isKindOfClass:NSClassFromString(@"AVNReplacementView")])
          {
              representedView = currentObject;
              break;
          }
      }
  
      //Copy appropriate properties from us to our representedView
      [representedView setAutoresizingMask:[self autoresizingMask]];
      [representedView setFrame:[self frame]];
      [[self superview] addSubview:representedView];
  
      //We were never here. :)
      [self removeFromSuperview];
      [viewNib autorelease];
  }
  
  @end
  
  @implementation AVNReplacementView
  @end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is that the cleanest method? Is there a standard way of going about this?</p>