What does "call method on" mean?

App Development
1

I’m working through the CWC course on Protocols and Delegates and I have heard the phrase “call a method on” several times in the film.

I know what it means to invoke a method. But I’m confused as to what “call a method on” (or even “invoke a method on”) means. It’s the “on” part that’s confusing to me.

Could someone please explain (beginner-friendly) what exactly that means? (I listed examples below:)

“The way that the collection view asks these questions is by calling methods on that object.”

“So when it asks the object, “hey, how many items do you want me to display?”, it’s actually calling a method on that object”

Does this mean “prompting the object to execute a function”?

2

You are on the right track. The Object is the Collection View and the methods (functions) that are called depend on the datasource (cardsArray in this case) and user input (gestures such and scrolling and tapping)

Those methods (functions) are:
numberOfItemsInSection - using the count of the number of items in the array
cellForItemAt- what type of cell to create
willDisplay - what to put in the cell
didSelectItemAt - what to do when the cell has been tapped.

Hope that helps.