Way to check data modification across many viewcontroller without using global variables? - swift

Question

I have an app which contains several viewControllers. On the viewDidAppear() of the first VC I call a set of functions which populate some arrays with information pulled from a database and then reload table data for a tableView. The functions all work perfectly fine and the desired result is achieved every time. What I am concerned about is how often viewDidAppear() is called. I do not think (unless I am wrong) it is a good idea for the refreshing functions to be automatically called and reload all of the data every time the view appears. I cannot put it into the viewDidLoad() because the tableView is part of a tab bar and if there are some modifications done to the data in any of the other tabs, the viewDidLoad() will not be called when tabbing back over and it would need to reload at this point (as modifications were made). I thought to use a set of variables to check if any modifications were done to the data from any of the other viewControllers to then conditionally tell the VDA to run or not. Generally:
override func viewDidAppear(_ animated: Bool) {
if condition {
//run functions
} else{
//don't run functions
}
}
The issue with this is that the data can be modified from many different viewControllers which may not segue back to the one of interest for the viewDidAppear() (so using a prepareForSegue wouldn't work necessarily). What is the best way to 'check' if the data has been modified. Again, I figured a set of bool variables would work well, but I want to stay away from using too many global variables. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Notification Center
struct NotificationName {
static let MyNotificationName = "kMyNotificationName"
}
class First {
init() {
NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self, selector: #selector(self.notificationReceived), name: NotificationName.MyNotificationName, object: nil)
}
func notificationReceived() {
// Refresh table view here
}
}
class Second {
func postNotification() {
NotificationCenter.default.post(name: NotificationName.MyNotificationName, object: nil)
}
}
Once postNotification is called, the function notificationReceived in class First will be called.

Answer 2

Create a common global data store and let all the view controllers get their data from there. This is essentially a global singleton with some accompanying functions. I know you wanted to do this without global variables but I think you should consider this.
Create a class to contain the data. Also let it be able to reload the data.
class MyData {
static let shared = MyData()
var data : SomeDataType
func loadData() {
// Load the data
}
}
Register to receive the notification as follows:
static let dataChangedNotification = Notification.Name("DataChanged")
override func viewWillAppear(_ animated: Bool) {
super.viewWillAppear(animated)
}
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
// Establish a way for call activity to notify this class so it can update accordingly
NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self, selector: #selector(handleDataChangedNotification(notification:)), name: "DataChanged", object: nil)
}
func handleDataChangedNotification(notification: NSNotification) {
// This ViewController was notified that data was changed
// Do something
}
func getDataToDisplay() {
let currentData = MyData.shared.data
// do something
}
// Any view controller would call this function if it changes the data
func sendDataChangeNotification() {
let obj = [String]() // make some obj to send. Pass whatever custom data you need to send
NotificationCenter.default.post(name: type(of: self).dataChangedNotification, object: obj)
}