Access properties from subview to ViewController Swift - swift

Question

how I can access the properties of my subview to viewcontroller.
example: If I have a #IBOutlet weak var loginBtn: UIButton! how can I access that to my view controller? I did a lot of things and tutorial in how to do that but still I didn't manage to make it work.
And also I'm confuse what's the best way to load xib? there's a lot of way that I saw in tutorial but I want to know also how they do it in production app.
protocol UserLoginDelegate {
func userDidLogin(status: Bool, message: String)
}
#IBDesignable class LoginWidget: UIView {
var loginDelegate: UserLoginDelegate?
var loginView: UIView!
var nibName: String = "LoginWidget"
let defaults = NSUserDefaults.standardUserDefaults()
#IBOutlet weak var loginButton: UIButton!
#IBOutlet weak var email: UITextField!
#IBOutlet weak var password: UITextField!
#IBOutlet weak var name: UITextField!
#IBAction func loginBtn(sender: AnyObject) {
// init
override init(frame: CGRect) {
super.init(frame: frame)
// set anything that uses the view or visible bounds
setup()
}
required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
super.init(coder: aDecoder)
// setup
setup()
}
func setup() {
loginView = loadViewFromNib()
loginView.frame = bounds
loginView.autoresizingMask = [UIViewAutoresizing.FlexibleWidth, UIViewAutoresizing.FlexibleHeight]
addSubview(loginView)
}
func loadViewFromNib() -> UIView {
let bundle = NSBundle(forClass: self.dynamicType)
let nib = UINib(nibName: nibName, bundle: bundle)
let view = nib.instantiateWithOwner(self, options: nil)[0] as! UIView
return view
}
}
Controller
class AuthenticationViewController: UIViewController, UserLoginDelegate {
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
loginWidget = LoginWidget(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 171, width: 375, height: 247))
authenticationSegment.setEnabled(true, forSegmentAtIndex: 0)
loginWidget.loginDelegate = self
self.view.addSubview(loginWidget)
// Do any additional setup after loading the view.
}
}

Answer 1

Just first, about SO: The goal here is to sort of have a crowd sourced knowledge base(an ontology!) that follows a pattern. Regular users like questions in the form of:
I'm confused about this. I want to accomplish this very specific thing. Here is my code that I've tried. I think this is the problem. Can you tell me how to do this properly or make it work?
So the in the end we get a long list of indexed searchable issues with direct solutions. These sort of wishy washy, non specific, multi-question, confusing posts tend to get downvoted, disregarded, told to rephrase, etc etc.
I'll address your questions:
If I have a #IBOutlet weak var loginBtn: UIButton! how can I access
that to my view controller? I did a lot of things and tutorial in how
to do that but still I didn't manage to make it work.
With a UIButton, or any UIControl subclass, you can drag an #IBAction into your view controller. Accomplish this by ctrl dragging from the storyboard button in question to your code(same way you made the outlet), and selecting Action from the drop down. Then you can optionally change the type of object sending this action (Is it a UIButton, or can anyone call this method, it just happens to be linked to the button), or you can change the control event that it it gets called for (ie is it when they touch DOWN on the button or touch up while the finger is still touching inside the button, this second is the default.)
More generally, if you have a complicated view that is not a control, you can always add a gesture recognizer to it(ie a UITapGestureRecognizer) and drag an IBAction from that, (drag the gesture recognizer onto the view, then from the left pane, ctrl drag from the gesture rec. to your code and select action again).
Finally, and this is more than you need currently, but if you have a view that must inform the view controller of something, or to tell the view controller(or any object) to do something like "send me data please", you can use the delegate pattern. Just briefly: You define a protocol to list the methods and variables needed by the protocol. You make your delegate object conform to this protocol by giving each method an implementation, then you put a variable in your view like
weak var delegate: MyProtocol?
The delegate pattern is important in Swift, and you should probably read up on it. You have probably worked with it if you've used a table view, for instance.
And also I'm confuse what's the best way to load xib? there's a lot of
way that I saw in tutorial but I want to know also how they do it in
production app.
Here's how I start every view that is a xib file's owner. I believe this is the proper way and would appreciate correction if this is wrong. This is swift 3, which you should be using at this point.. it's much better!
#IBOutlet var mainView: UIView!
// the above is the outlet from the xib's main view. which I always call main view
override init(frame: CGRect) {
super.init(frame: frame)
combinedInit()
}
required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
super.init(coder: aDecoder)
combinedInit()
}
func combinedInit(){
Bundle.main.loadNibNamed("XibFileName", owner: self, options: nil)
addSubview(mainView)
mainView.frame = self.bounds
// more initialization stuff
}