In Objective C, there are 2 primary ways of informing an observing object that an event has happened and that the observing object can/should perform an action related to it. They are the delegate pattern used everywhere in the Cocoa Touch frameworks (look for properties called delegate or dataSource that uses a protocol) as well as notifications such as UIKeyboardWillShowNotification.

Sometimes either of them can be used. A good rule of thumb I defer to is if there needs to be 1 or possibly multiple observers. If it is always zero or one interested object observing for the event, and the observing object ”owns” the other object (such as when one view controller presents another, the former ”owns” the latter), you will usually want to use a delegate. If there might be multiple objects interested in updates, e.g. multiple view controllers refreshing when an object has changed, post notifications.

Note also that, if you require a response to complete the process, you'll have to use a delegate such as MFMailComposeViewControllerDelegate#mailComposeController:didFinishWithResult:error: requiring the delegate to dismiss the view controller.

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