AEXMLElement: severe memory leak due to strong reference cycle about aexml HOT 4 CLOSED

It seems that changing line 35 in AEXML.swift to

private(set) weak var parent: AEXMLElement?

"fixes" the memory leak.

But this is not a clean solution, since now a parent object can become nil even if it has children. The parent reference in AEXMLElement should rather be an unowned reference, but then the parent cannot be optional and the code would have to be refactored accordingly.

I am stil rereading again and againt the chapter about ARC in the Apple Swift Book myself ;)

from aexml.

Hello,

first of all, thanks for the feedback, it's a good one.
I did some testing with your example, and it's behaving as you said.

parent property on AEXMLElement is optional by design, because AEXMLDocument (inherited from AEXMLElement) has no parent (it's parent property is set to nil on initialization).
Because of that I believe that solution you recommended (weak reference for parent property) is a way to go, because it will resolve strong reference cycle between AEXMLElement and parent (also AEXMLElement), but it will also allow parent to be nil when it needs to (AEXMLDocument).

If you want, you can send me a pull request with this fix, or I'll do it later.

Cheers,
// T

from aexml.

Just made my first pull request. Yay! ;) Please see comment in the request.
Thank you for AEXML and best regards, Georg

from aexml.

I'm glad you did. :)

I'll close this issue now, because it has been fixed via this pull request.

Cheers,
// T

from aexml.