The Foundation framework defines a base layer of classes that can be used for any type of COCOA program.

Foundation framework is DESIGNED for:

• Define basic object behavior and introduce consistent conventions for such things as memory management, object mutability, and notifications.
• Supporting internationalization and localization with (among other things) bundle technology and Unicode strings.
• For supporting object persistence.
• For supporting object distribution.
• Providing some measure of operating-system independence to support portability.
• Providing object wrappers or equivalents for programmatic primitives, such as numeric values, strings, and collections. It also provides utility classes for accessing underlying system entities and services, such as ports, threads, and file systems.
• The foundation class hierarchy is rooted at NSObject Class ALONG with NSObject and NSCopying protocols

The Foundation Framework is logically grouped into Categories.

Value Objects:

• ENCAPSULATES values of primitive data types including strings, integers , floats, dates etc
• NSNumber INSTANTIATES numbers that contains integers, floats, doubles
• NSDate, NSTimeZone, NSCalendar, NSDateComponents provides objects that represent times, dates, calendar and locales

Collections:

• NSArray, NSDictionary, NSSet along with the mutable variants

Operation System Services:

• File System and URL NSFileManager. NSFileHandle, NSURL etc
• Concurrency NSThread, NSOperation, NSOperationQueue
• Interprocess Communication – NSPipe
• Networking – NSNetService, NSNetServiceBrowser

Notifications

Archiving and Serialization

XML Processing – NSXML

Predicates and Expressions – NSPredicate, NSCompoundPredicate, NSComparisonPredicate.

Spotlight Queries NSMetadataItem. NSMetadataQuery.

The Foundation framework defines a base layer of classes that can be used for any type of Cocoa program.

Foundation framework is designed for:

The Foundation Framework is logically grouped into Categories.

Value Objects:

Collections:

Operation System Services:

Notifications

Archiving and Serialization

XML Processing – NSXML

Predicates and Expressions – NSPredicate, NSCompoundPredicate, NSComparisonPredicate.

Spotlight Queries NSMetadataItem. NSMetadataQuery.