deinit is executed before viewDidLoad - swift

It does not make sense to say "deinit is executed before viewDidLoad". If not witnessed by myself, I never believe it. However, it 100% really happens here on my Project(Xcode8 and Swift2.3).
Is there any reason for this weird to happen?

Sure, initialize your view controller to a local variable, don't access its view or add it to the view hierarchy and leave the current scope. The view controller will deinit and viewDidLoad() will never have been called.
Keep in mind that viewDidLoad() is only called the first time the view controller's view property is explicitly accessed, or when loadView() or loadViewIfNeeded() are called on the view controller.

Had a similar experience and found I was mistakenly calling the same segue twice. The first view controller constructed got de-initialized immediately (pre viewDidLoad).

Related

Is there a way to avoid viewDidLoad beeing called after every segue?

i initialize tables, data etc in my main ViewController. For more settings, i want to call another Viewcontroller with:
DateChangeController *theController = [self.storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:#"dateChangeController"];
[self presentViewController:theController animated:YES completion:^{NSLog(#"View controller presented.");}];
And some clicks later i return with a segue (custom:)
NSLog(#"Scroll to Ticket");
[self.sourceViewController presentModalViewController:self.destinationViewController animated:YES];
My Problem:
After returning to my main ViewController, viewDidLoad is called (everytime).I read, that the ARC releasing my mainView after "going" to the other ViewController and calling the viewDidUnload Method, but i want to keep all my data and tables i initialize at the beginning..
Any solution? Thank you very much!
The problem is that you are doing this:
main view controller ->
date change controller ->
a *different* main view controller
In other words, although in your verbal description you use the words "returning to my main ViewController", you are not in fact returning; you are moving forward to yet another instance of this main view controller every time, piling up all these view controllers on top of one another.
The way to return to an existing view controller is not to make a segue but to return! The return from presentViewController is dismissViewController. You do not use a segue for that; you just call dismissViewController. (Okay, in iOS 6 you can in fact use a segue, but it is a very special and rather complicated kind of segue called an Unwind or Exit segue.)
If you do that, you'll be back at your old view controller, which was sitting there all along waiting for your return, and viewDidLoad will not be called.
So, this was a good question for you to ask, because the double call of viewDidLoad was a sign to you that your architecture was all wrong.
I think you're taking the wrong approach - viewDidLoad is supposed to be called when it is called - it's a notification to you that the view is being refreshed or initially loaded. What you want to do is move that table initialization code somewhere else, or, at least, set a Boolean variable so that it is only called once. Would it work to create an object that has your table data when viewDidLoad is first called, then to check it to see if it's already been called?

On iOS, if a view controller has no view yet, why does NSLog(#"self.view is %p", self.view) crash?

If a new iOS project is created with an Empty App template in Xcode 4.3.2, and in AppDelegate.m:
self.window.rootViewController = [[FooViewController alloc] init];
and in FooViewController's viewDidLoad, the following:
NSLog(#"self.view is %p", self.view);
NSLog(#"self.view is %#", self.view);
will print out the view, so it looks like the default loadView will instantiate a view and assign it to self.view.
So if I override loadView with an all empty method, and comment out the second NSLog statement above, I expect the first NSLog statement to print out 0x0, but instead the app crashed due to bad memory access right at that NSLog line. Why would that be?
Okay, after a knee-jerk and obviously wrong answer, I tried this. The Empty App template would not have a rootViewController, so I used a single screen template. After running, I see that you are getting a stack overflow. In trying to access self.view, you are calling the view property on the superclass, which is then trying to load the view in order to return it, which is calling viewDidLoad, etc., as far as I can see. The other NSLog statement does the same.
The documentation for the view property in UIViewController states:
Because accessing this property can cause the view to be loaded automatically, you can use the isViewLoaded method to determine if the view is currently in memory.
It also has a link to The View Controller Life Cycle, which states:
The steps that occur during the load cycle are as follows:
The load cycle is triggered when the view controller's view property is accessed and the view is not currently in memory.
The view controller calls its loadView method. The default implementation of the loadView method does one of two things:
If the view controller is associated with a storyboard, it loads the views from the storyboard.
If the view controller is not associated with a storyboard, an empty UIView object is created and assigned to the view property.
The view controller calls its viewDidLoad method to allow your subclass to perform any additional load-time tasks.
So when you say:
So if I override loadView with an all empty method
You're deliberately breaking the life cycle, because when your overridden version of loadView finishes, it should have loaded a view. Because it didn't, you get a crash.

UIViewController not releasing subviews when dealloc (using ARC)

I have what seems like a weird (non?) issue with UIViewController. It appears that the controller is not releasing its subviews when it is dealloc'd. I placed NSLog messages in all of the subview's dealloc method as well as the view controller. The view controller dealloc gets called but the subview's do not. However, if I then push another instance of that view controller on to the navigation stack, it appears that all of the subviews of the previous instance are then released (I get a bunch of NSLog messages in the console letting me know). I've check and I have no separate reference to the custom view controller in the presenting view controller (the one that's doing the pushing).
One small (maybe) detail: The custom view controller does receive a block it stores and then executes before popping. However, I did send nil to it and I get the same behavior. Plus, the presenting view controller does dealloc when popped of the stack, so no retain cycle.
Also, I did try explicitly releasing each view in the dealloc method of the custom view controller. Same behavior.
Is it possible the navigation controller would be holding on to it? It doesn't seem to do this to any of my other view controllers.
My problem is that this does represent a memory leak (of all those subviews); though the leak doesn't stack, it's still a leak.
Ok, this is embarrassing. I did find the problem in another class (called ViewDef) I was inadvertently using as a collection class. It was a quick and dirty way of keeping track of my subviews when I was first figuring out some animations (months ago). ViewDef stored frame/font/color/etc info retrieved from a database, so it was convenient to also store the views when figuring out animations (between orientations). These ViewDefs were being store by my model and passed around, so of course the views were also being retained (and replaced later by another view controller). Anyway, I forgot to insert a warning in my code to fix this later.
Moral of the story: If you plan on doing something stupid, at least document your stupidity so you don't have to broadcast it over the internet later.
you could try setting the subviews to nil in the viewDidUnload method maybe that will help
One thing to try is to make sure all your subviews delegates are set to nil.

loadView Vs init method

Please let me know at what times init and loadView method gets called.
To my knowledge init method gets called only once when view is initialized and loadView is called anytime view is loaded. So, even if you are pushing a new view in the view stack and then popping it then also the loadView of the poped up view should get called. But when I am running my code in debugging mode, both of these methods are getting called once, irrespective of how many times I am loading the same screen. Please let me know if I am missing something.
you are right at some points :)
The init method is being called when the ViewController object is instantiated. The loadView method gets called every time a ViewController should load its view into memory. This can happen before the view is displayed for the first time OR when it should be displayed for a second, third,... time but had been removed from memory before. (this might happen if your app runs out of memory.)
If you want to execute some code every time the view becomes visible, you should have a look at the methods viewWillAppear/viewWillDisappear/viewDidAppear/viewDidDisappear.
loadView is called when you access the view property of your view controller and it's nil.
If the view has been unloaded (viewDidUnload has been called for memory purpose) then loadView will be called again. If not it will not be called.
What you want is viewWillAppear: or viewDidAppear:.

Invocation of ViewDidLoad after initWithNibName

It appears that ViewDidLoad() is sent to a ViewController only after its View is physically displayed (i.e. via NavigationController pushViewController), and not immediately after initWithNibName(). Is this a behavior I can rely on? I would like to get the chance to set the member variables of my view so that all the members are valid by the time ViewDidLoad() is invoked.
You can set up member variables and other such things in initWithNibName:bundle:.
- (id)initWithNibName:(NSString *)nibName bundle:(NSBundle *)nibBundle {
if (self = [super initWithNibName:nibName bundle:nibBundle]) {
// set up ivars and other stuff here.
someIvar = someValue;
}
return self;
}
You are correct that viewDidLoad: is only sent when the view is physically displayed, i.e when it is added to some visible view (which may sometimes be never if the user does not reach that view). So it's useful to split the functionality and think about what you can do at init time and what happens at view load time.
As Marcelo Cantos notes in the comment, viewDidLoad: is generally a fine place to do all sorts of setup work, using the concept of "lazy loading," so that you defer the setup until as late time as possible.
viewDidLoad is called before a view controller is displayed for the first time, not immediately after initWithNibName. For example, if you have a tab bar controller, all of the child view controllers will be initd at launch, but viewDidLoad will only be called when you click on the appropriate tab the first time. It's generally a good idea to initialize memory-intensive items in viewDidLoad, so as to avoid using unnecessary memory.
I found that if I override initiWithNibName in the view controller, the viewDidLoad method is not called. I have to call it manually [self viewDidLoad]. But if I do not override initWithNibName: viewDidLoad is called. I am working with 4 view controllers in tab bar controller. the tab bar controller is loaded from another view.
Sorry to unearth an old thread, but this solved it for me...
-(void)viewDidLoad is only called after -(void)loadView has done its thing. In the docs for loadView:
The view controller calls this method when its view property is requested but is currently nil.
My view controller only has viewDidLoad called after its view is request by a UITabBarItem, meaning viewDidLoad is only called in the viewController once the tab bar button is pressed. I, like the OP, want viewDidLoad to be called directly after the nib is loaded, so it's contents (titles, etc) can be populated before the user clicks the tab button.
So, after calling "self = [super initWithNibName:#"nibName" bundle:nil];" in the view controller's custom initialiser, I immediately called '[self view]' afterwards. As the view is requested earlier than when it is requested by the UITabBarItem (which calls 'addSubview'), the view is initialised fully during initialisation, rather than when requested.
Hope this helps.