I was using this example which explains the use of NSNotification.
In my case, I have a UIViewController in which I have a UITableView. To this tableview I am assigning a dataSource and delegate programatically by instatiating my UITableViewController. So far I have not declared any inits, and thus have been using the simple init() to initialize my UITableViewController. (This UITableViewController is not on the StoryBoard).
class foo: UIViewController{
#IBOutlet weak var fooTable: UITableView!
var fooTableViewController = MyTableViewController()
override func viewDidLoad(){
super.viewDidLoad()
fooTable.delegate = fooTableViewController
fooTable.dataSource = fooTableViewController
}
}
class MyTableViewController: UITableViewController {
override func viewDidLoad(){
super.viewDidLoad()
NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserver(self, selector: "notificationReceived", name: "TEST_NOTIFICATION", object: nil)
}
}
If I try to add the observer in viewDidLoad() of the UIViewController, it does not work.
So my question is: Does using the NSNotification require the usage of init(coder aDecoder: NSCoder)? If so, then what is the correct way to initialize using this init in swift? How should I be instantiating MyTableViewController in my UIViewController instance foo?
viewDidLoad is only called when the view of a view controller is loaded - in the code you're showing you create a table view controller subclass, assign it as the datasource and delegate of another table view (confusing, as it will already be the datasource and delegate of its own table view), but never actually do anything with the table view controller's view.
This means that viewDidLoad will not be called.
You should probably be adding your table view controller's tableView as a subview and also adding it as a child view controller so that rotation and appearance events are forwarded properly.
Note that the question and answer are nothing whatsoever to do with notification centers or Swift, but just about understanding the view controller lifecycle.
If you want a separate object to act as a datasource and delegate for your table view, great idea, but don't use a UITableViewController subclass. Just create a plain object which conforms to the data source and/or delegate protocols.
Related
I have a UICollectionView in my class declared as
#IBOutlet weak var artworkCollectionView: UICollectionView!
Inside this class there is one delegate method called by two other View Controllers, one of these VC is a pop up, the other one is a normal VC.
The delegate method gets some data from the database and then updates the collection view calling inside a closure:
self.artworkCollectionView.reloadData()
When the delegate method is called by the pop up VC, then all works great. BUT when the delegate method is called by the normal VC when it gets to self.artworkCollectionView.reloadData() it gets the infamous Fatal error: Unexpectedly found nil while implicitly unwrapping an Optional value.
I have checked all the references to the cell reuseIdentifier and all is correct. I suspect that since the UICollectionView is declared as weak var, when I go from the current class to the pop up and then the pop up calls the delegate methods, the reference is not lost, but when I go from the current class to the normal VC and then the normal VC calls the delegate method the reference to my weak var is lost and so it is "seen" as nil.
#IBOutlet weak var artworkCollectionView: UICollectionView!
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
// Set up
artworkCollectionView.dataSource = self
artworkCollectionView.delegate = self
artworkCollectionView.isUserInteractionEnabled = true
artworkCollectionView.allowsSelection = true
artworkCollectionView.register(UINib(nibName:
"MyCollectionViewCell", bundle: nil),
forCellWithReuseIdentifier: "cell")
}
// delegate method
func reloadCollections() {
retrieveAlbumRatings { (isAlbum) in
if isAlbum {
self.retrieveAlbumData(completion: { (isFinished) in
if isFinished {
// Reload collection views
self.artworkCollectionView.reloadData()
}
})
}
}
}
If I am right, my question is: how can I give weak var artworkCollectionView: UICollectionView! a STRONG reference so that it does not get lost in the flow from the current class to the normal VC and back?
EDIT: here is what I tried so far:
Remove “weak” from the outlet declaration so making it: #IBOutlet var artworkCollectionView: UICollectionView!
But I got the same error
I passed artworkCollectionView to the normal VC via override performSegue and then passed it back as an argument of the delegate method. This does not give me the fatal error but also it does not reload the UICollectionView because I think that anyway the weak reference to the UICollectionView outlet is lost.
Thanks for your help (disclaimer: I am pretty new to Swift..)
Inside this class there is one delegate method called by two other
View Controllers, one of these VC is a pop up, the other one is a
normal VC.
The delegate method gets some data from the database and then updates
the collection view calling inside a closure:
self.artworkCollectionView.reloadData()
The flow appears to be that you have a VC containing the code above, the VC can either open a pop-up or just do a standard push segue to the "normal VC".
You want some operation to occur in either the pop-up VC or normal VC, load some data and then when the user is directed back to the originating VC, the UICollectionView is updated with that data.
Your problems are the following:
I passed artworkCollectionView to the normal VC via override
performSegue and then passed it back as an argument of the delegate
method. This does not give me the fatal error but also it does not
reload the UICollectionView because I think that anyway the weak
reference to the UICollectionView outlet is lost.
You shouldn't be passing anything around like this in most cases unless you have a really good reason to do so (I don't see one).
You want a separation of concerns here. You have to think carefully about what you wanjt to pass between VCs to avoid making weird dependencies between them. I wouldn't pass outlets for multiple reasons, the first being that you now have to keep track of the outlet in multiple VCs if you ever decide to change it. The second being that it requires too much mental gymnastics to keep track of the state of the outlet since it's being passed around everywhere. The outlets are also only guaranteed to be set at certain phases of the lifecycle. For example if you retrieve the destination VC from the segue in prepareForSegue:sender: and attempt to reference the outlets at that time, they will all be nil because they haven't been set yet.
These are all good reasons why the VC that contains the code above should be the one (and the only one) maintaining control over what gets displayed in artworkCollectionView and when. The problem here is how you're approaching this, rather than having the pop-up or normal VC call the delegate method or doing weird things like passing outlets from one VC to another, just pass the data around instead.
The simplest example is:
The pop-up VC and normal VC call some code to actually fetch the
data.
Then depending on how you actually segued to the pop-up VC or
normal VC from original VC, use either parentViewController or
presentingViewController to get the reference to the original VC.
Set the data into the original VC through that reference.
Dismiss the pop-up VC or normal VC if necessary (depends on your specific app, maybe you want the user to push a UIButton to dismiss instead of doing it for them).
When the original VC comes back into view, add some code to a lifecycle method like
viewWillAppear to have it load the contents of the data into the
UICollectionView at that time.
I see no reason why you should be passing any outlets outside of the original VC that should be the one managing it.
Short answer: Don't do that. You should treat a view controller's views as private. You should add a method to your view controller that other objects call to tell it to reload it's collection view.
The longer answer is that your view controller's collection view should stick around as long as the view controller is on-screen. It sounds like you don't have a very strong understanding of object lifecycle and how ARC works. You should read up on that and do some exercises until you understand it better.
Try something like this:
//Make artworkCollectionView a normal weak var, not implicitly unwrapped.
//You'll need to change your other code to unwrap it every time you use it.
#IBOutlet weak var artworkCollectionView: UICollectionView?
...
func reloadCollections() {
retrieveAlbumRatings { (isAlbum) in
if isAlbum {
//The construct `[weak self]` below is called a capture list
self.retrieveAlbumData(completion: { [weak self] (isFinished) in
guard let weakSelf = self else {
print("self is nil");
return
}
}
if isFinished {
// Reload collection views
guard let collectionView = weakSelf.artworkCollectionView else {
print("collectionView is nil!")
return
}
collectionView.reloadData()
})
}
}
}
The main ViewController is embedded in a UINavigationController subclass, and the VC has a subview that is loaded from a nib. The subview is called MenuView, and contains UIButtons that will link to other VCs.
To keep my main ViewController less unruly, I have put all these buttons into a subview that loads from a nib that animates the menu opening and closing.
However, I would like to present other view controllers from these, sometimes "Modally", sometimes "Show". What I have done seems to work, but I just want to know if this is alright, or if I have caused some unwanted effects that I'm unaware of (like a strong reference cycle that would cause a memory leak, or something). Or is there a better way to do this?
Some code:
In MenuView.swift
class MenuView: UIView {
var navigationController = CustomNavigationController()
func combinedInit(){
NSBundle.mainBundle().loadNibNamed("MenuViewXib", owner: self, options: nil)
addSubview(mainView)
mainView.frame = self.bounds
}
#IBAction func optionsAction(sender: AnyObject) {
self.navigationController.performSegueWithIdentifier("presentOptions", sender: self)
}
In ViewController.swift
menuView.navigationController = self.navigationController as! CustomNavigationController
Short answer: No, it is not alright to access a view controller from within some view in the hierarchy, because that would break all the MVC rules written.
UIView objects are meant to display UI components in the screen and are responsible for drawing and laying out their child views correctly. That's all there is. Nothing more, nothing less.
You should handle those kind of interactions between views and controllers always in the controller in which the view in question actually belong. If you need to send messages from a view to its view controller, you can make use of either the delegate approach or NSNotificationCenter class.
If I were in your shoes, I would use a delegate when view needs some information from its view controller. It is more understandable than using notification center as it makes it much easier to keep track of what's going on between. If the view controller needs some information from a view (in other words, the other way around), I'd go with the notification center.
protocol MenuViewDelegate: class {
func menuViewDidClick(menuView: MenuView)
}
class MenuView: UIView {
var weak delegate: MenuViewDelegate?
#IBAction func optionsAction(sender: AnyObject) {
delegate?.menuViewDidClick(self)
}
}
Let's look at what's going on at the view controller side:
class MenuViewController: UIViewController, MenuViewDelegate {
override func viewDidLoad() {
...
self.menuView.delegate = self
}
func menuViewDidClick(menuView: MenuView) {
navigationController?.performSegueWithIdentifier("presentOptions", sender: self)
}
}
For more information about communication patterns in iOS, you might want to take a look at this great article in order to comprehend how they work.
I am developing an mac osx application which have initial window and viewcontroller launched from main storyboard. I want to replace the content view loaded by storyboard with my view.
I am doing this -
func replaceContentView() {
parentViewController = MainViewController(nibName: "MainContainerView", bundle: nil)!
let fullScreenFrame = NSScreen.mainScreen()?.visibleFrame
self.initialWindow.setFrame(fullScreenFrame!, display: false, animate: false)
self.initialWindow.contentView = parentViewController! . view
}
Problem with this approach is that the default viewcontroller is never getting deallocated. deinit() of default viewController is not called at all.
This is causing memory leak. So how to completely remove default content view and associated viewcontroller?
Storyboards don't deal in views, they deal in viewcontrollers. What a Storyboard does when it loads a view into a window is that it creates an NSViewController and then goes
windowController.contentViewController = theViewController
That implicitly also inserts theViewController.view as the window's content view. So do the same, and all will be fine.
Marek's example is wrong, because CustomView shouldn't be an NSView subclass, it should be a CustomViewController class that owns a view containing the label etc. As a bonus, NSViewController will take care of loading the XIB for you as well.
Alternately, you could set windowController.contentViewController = nil (which will remove the old view controller and its content view) and then set your content view. But really, why fight the framework when that's exactly what NSViewController is intended for?
You can write the code in deinit method,may it will help you.
deinit {
// perform the deinitialization
}
Your contentViewController within NSWindow instance still holds strongly its old view. You have replaced just property on your NSWindow instance.
To clarify what you have done:
NSWindow holds strongly against new view
NSViewController holds strongly against old view
You should assign your new view into contentViewController.view property as well
This might be helpfull:
NSWindow.h
/* NSViewController Support */
/* The main content view controller for the window. This provides the contentView of the window. Assigning this value will remove the existing contentView and will make the contentViewController.view the main contentView for the window. The default value is nil. The contentViewController only controls the contentView, and not the title of the window. The window title can easily be bound to the contentViewController with the following: [window bind:NSTitleBinding toObject:contentViewController withKeyPath:#"title" options:nil]. Setting the contentViewController will cause the window to resize based on the current size of the contentViewController. Autolayout should be used to restrict the size of the window. The value of the contentViewController is encoded in the NIB. Directly assigning a contentView will clear out the rootViewController.
*/
#availability(OSX, introduced=10.10)
var contentViewController: NSViewController?
/* The view controller for the window's contentView. Tracks the window property of the same name.
*/
#property (strong) NSViewController *contentViewController NS_AVAILABLE_MAC(10_10);
However what you do seems incorrect if you do this on launch.
You either set custom subclass of contentView to your new nsview subclass which can load it's view from another XIB (no need for storyboard).
Abstract example:
class CustomView: NSView {
#IBOutlet var contentView: NSView!
#IBOutlet weak var label: NSTextField!
required init(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
super.init(coder: aDecoder)
initSubviews()
}
override init(frame: CGRect) {
super.init(frame: frame)
initSubviews()
}
func initSubviews() {
let nib = NSNib(nibName: "CustomView", bundle: nil)
nib.instantiateWithOwner(self, topLevelObjects: nil)
contentView.frame = bounds
addSubview(contentView)
}
}
PS: topLevelObjects is set to nil because you hold strongly contentView. So no need to worry about memory management.
I'm trying to hook up a scroll view using Interface Builder, and the UIScrollViewDelegate.scrollViewDidScroll method isn't getting invoked on scroll.
In IB, I have a view controller that uses my PagedScrollViewController as a custom class. In that class, I have:
class PagedScrollViewController: UIViewController, UIScrollViewDelegate {
func scrollViewDidScroll(scrollView: UIScrollView!) {
println("scrollViewDidScroll")
}
}
Unfortunately, that println is never getting invoked. I know that PagedScrollViewController is being connected correctly because if I add a viewDidLoad method, that gets invoked. Is there something extra I need to do to attach the delegate other than setting the custom class?
Turns out I needed to attach the scroll view's delegate to the the controller. Here's what worked for me:
class PagedScrollViewController: UIViewController, UIScrollViewDelegate {
#IBOutlet var scrollView: UIScrollView!
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
scrollView.delegate = self
}
I have a label in a second viewController in Swift, and I want change this between my firstViewController. I try this with prepareForSegue: also with ChildView and ParentView and accessing to label since parentView.. But I get error..
What is the correct form to can make this?
Try declared secondVIew:
class ViewController: UIViewController {
var v = View2Controller()
#IBAction func but(sender : AnyObject) {
v.label2.text = "newText" //Here get the error EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION
}
...
class View2Controller: UIViewController {
#IBOutlet var label2 : UILabel
Thanks!
The more code you provide the easier it is to get answers.
In your case, you are initializing a band new View2Controller. Since label2 is an IBOutlet it expects data from a nib file. Since it didn't get any of this data, label2 is going to be nil hence why you get a EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION crash.
You can access the root view controller of a navigation controller because navigation controllers are special in that they have their own stack and maintain their own view hierarchy. This is why you have to push and pop view controllers in a navigation controller. This also allows child controllers to maintain a reference to its parent controller.
The proper solution for your situation would be to use protocols. Otherwise give View2Controller a property and reference to ViewController then make changes to ViewController through that property.