Is there a BOOL or some other way of knowing if viewDidLoad: has been called?
I need to change a view property every time my view has entered active, but if the view hasn't ever been loaded, I don't want to prematurely trigger viewDidLoad:. If there isn't way of easily telling if viewDidLoad: has been called, I'll simply add a BOOL called loaded set to NO in the view controller init, then change the view properties after entered active if loaded is YES or in viewWillAppear: if loaded is NO then set loaded to YES.
Use isViewLoaded. Other than that it does exactly what you want, there's not that much to say about it. The documentation is as simple as:
Calling this method reports whether the view is loaded. Unlike the
view property, it does not attempt to load the view if it is not
already in memory.
Perhaps you should init your UIView in viewDidLoad, and then change it in whichever way you need to inside viewWillLayoutSubviews.
Here's the pedantic answer to this question. If you want to know when viewDidLoad has been triggered, you have to implement viewDidLoad in your view controller
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
viewDidLoadCalled = YES; // Not actually the best way to do this...
// Set up more view properties
}
But as Tommy says, you actually need to use isViewLoaded. This gets around the problem of doing a check like
if (!self.view) {
// do something
}
which inadvertently loads the view by virtue of asking about it.
Be aware that by the time viewWillAppear: is called, the view will always have loaded. Also, on older (pre-iOS 6 I think) releases, the view can unload and be reloaded many times over a view controller's lifetime. Refer to the very nice Big Nerd Ranch view lifecycle diagram for the old behavior. It's almost the same in iOS 6+, except that the view doesn't unload under low memory conditions and viewDidUnload doesn't get called:
In a UIViewController subclass, I have the following methods:
-(void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
// do something
myTextField.text = #"Default";
}
- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated {
[super viewDidAppear:animated];
// do something
[myTextField selectAll:self];
[myTextField becomeFirstResponder];
}
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
// do something
myTextField.delegate = self;
}
The NIB has been created using Interface Builder. The corresponding view controller object is pushed by the navigation controller through pushViewController.
The inteded behavior is to show a default text entry in a text field, to select the entire text and to set the text field as first responder. [Edit: I've noticed that selecting all and making first responder makes no sense as the selection would dissapear; still, I wonder why the methods behave as described next.]
However, while methods viewDidLoad and viewWillAppear are called, the method viewDidAppear is not called. Can anybody tell me why? Most questions I found on the web and here deal with both viewWillAppear/viewDidAppear are not working; I also understood that in subviews or programmatically created views these methods are not evoked; but this does not apply in case and also I wonder why one of these "lifecycle" methods is evoked and the other not.
Any idea? Thanks!
I had this issue happen to me: viewWillAppear was being called but viewDidAppear was not!
I finally figured out that this was because I had a tabBarController where I overloaded it's own viewDidAppear and forgot the [super viewDidAppear:animated];
It threw off every VC in every tab! adding that line back in fixed it for my other VC's.
Hope this helps someone!
There is one case when viewWillAppear will be called but viewDidAppear will not.
Suppose you have two viewControllers and you push from the first to the second controller. Then, using the swipe, you want to go back to the first one, both controllers are displayed at the same time and at that moment viewWillAppear will be called from the first controller.
This way, you do not finish the swipe and stay on the second controller and viewDidAppear will not be called from the first controller.
I had the same problem.
I had copy/pasted viewDidAppear to create viewWillAppear but had forgotten to change the super.viewDidAppear() call. This then seemed to stop viewDidAppear from being called.
It sounds like somewhere in your code you have missed or messed-up a call to the superclass.
The call to viewDidAppear: should always follow viewWillAppear: unless you are doing something custom, which you say you don't. I don't know why it doesn't work but here are a few ideas:
Could it be that you are doing something strange in one of the delegate methods for UITextFieldDelegate? It's unlikely that it would affect viewDidAppear: being called but it could be a culprit.
Have you loaded a lot of stuff into memory before pushing the view? I'm not sure what would happen if you got a memory warning between viewWillAppear: and viewDidAppear:.
Have you tried to do a Clean? Sometimes that can help.
In cases like these when it should work I usually create a new class and the introduce the functionality one at a the time to see if I can get it work that way. I tried your code in a new Navigation Based project where I added a new UIViewController with an outlet to the text field. Then I pasted the code from the question and it did work as expected.
This can be because you added a child view controller to your parent VC in viewDidLoad or viewWillAppear. The child's appearance prevents the call to viewDidAppear.
This is a crazy thing to do, and I only know because this was a bug in my code. I meant to add the child VC to this VC, not the parent VC.
I'm returning YES in my view controller's shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation function, and I can see using breakpoints that YES is being returned, however the willRotateToInterfaceOrientation method isn't being called, and nor is any other rotating method. It seems like after returning YES nothing happens!
Any ideas?
Mike
Is this views viewController a subview of some other root view controller thats not a navigation controller? if so then the call does not propagate to the subviews controller, so that might be why your view isnt rotating.
I have a similar problem and saw Daniel's answer however I can't find any confirmation of this in the developer documentation. Not that I don't believe the answer but I don't really understand why the orientation call does not propagate.
Someone gave me a trick that works using something like this:
[UIDevice currentDevice] beginGeneratingDeviceOrientationNotifications];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:#selector(detectOrientation) name:#"UIDeviceOrientationDidChangeNotification" object:nil];
One thing to look for is I found if I had UIPopoverController called in [UINavigationController viewDidAppear], then willRotateToInterfaceOrientation and didRotateFromInterfaceOrientation are not called. It looks like UIPopoverController being modal blocks the rotation method calls.
Yes me too. Ok, it won't get called in a sub-viewcontroller - have to pass it down. Can deal with that. And the notification idea works well except that you only get "did..." not "will..." (afaik) and anyway it's a messy solution to a problem which shouldn't be there.
My mistake was to call [super loadView] in my loadView. Not supposed to do that. When I removed [super loadView] and alloc'd the view myself willRotateToInterfaceOrientation started working.
What's really weird is that the [super loadView] was in the sub-viewcontroller and the event wasn't even reaching the top one...
If you are not receiving callbacks on willAutoRotateToInterfaceOrientation in any view controller, add the view controller as your root view controller's child view controller.
For Eg; say self.viewController is your root view controller and childViewController is the view controller in which you want to get auto-rotation callbacks, add the following line of code;
[self.viewController addChildViewController:childViewController];
Actually, adding as the child view controller to any view controller which gets rotation call backs will work too.
Hope it helps.
Apple documentation
At launch time, apps should always set up their interface in a portrait orientation. After the application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method returns, the app uses the view controller rotation mechanism described above to rotate the views to the appropriate orientation prior to showing the window.
So if you are using a TabBarViewController be carefull to set up the selected view in the application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method.
I've read numerous posts about people having problems with viewWillAppear when you do not create your view hierarchy just right. My problem is I can't figure out what that means.
If I create a RootViewController and call addSubView on that controller, I would expect the added view(s) to be wired up for viewWillAppear events.
Does anyone have an example of a complex programmatic view hierarchy that successfully receives viewWillAppear events at every level?
Apple's Docs state:
Warning: If the view belonging to a view controller is added to a view hierarchy directly, the view controller will not receive this message. If you insert or add a view to the view hierarchy, and it has a view controller, you should send the associated view controller this message directly. Failing to send the view controller this message will prevent any associated animation from being displayed.
The problem is that they don't describe how to do this. What does "directly" mean? How do you "indirectly" add a view?
I am fairly new to Cocoa and iPhone so it would be nice if there were useful examples from Apple besides the basic Hello World crap.
If you use a navigation controller and set its delegate, then the view{Will,Did}{Appear,Disappear} methods are not invoked.
You need to use the navigation controller delegate methods instead:
navigationController:willShowViewController:animated:
navigationController:didShowViewController:animated:
I've run into this same problem. Just send a viewWillAppear message to your view controller before you add it as a subview. (There is one BOOL parameter which tells the view controller if it's being animated to appear or not.)
[myViewController viewWillAppear:NO];
Look at RootViewController.m in the Metronome example.
(I actually found Apple's example projects great. There's a LOT more than HelloWorld ;)
I finally found a solution for this THAT WORKS!
UINavigationControllerDelegate
I think the gist of it is to set your nav control's delegate to the viewcontroller it is in, and implement UINavigationControllerDelegate and it's two methods. Brilliant! I'm so excited i finally found a solution!
Thanks iOS 13.
ViewWillDisappear, ViewDidDisappear, ViewWillAppear and
ViewDidAppear won't get called on a presenting view controller on
iOS 13 which uses a new modal presentation that doesn't cover the
whole screen.
Credits are going to Arek Holko. He really saved my day.
I just had the same issue. In my application I have 2 navigation controllers and pushing the same view controller in each of them worked in one case and not in the other. I mean that when pushing the exact same view controller in the first UINavigationController, viewWillAppear was called but not when pushed in the second navigation controller.
Then I came across this post UINavigationController should call viewWillAppear/viewWillDisappear methods
And realized that my second navigation controller did redefine viewWillAppear. Screening the code showed that I was not calling
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
I added it and it worked !
The documentation says:
If you override this method, you must call super at some point in your implementation.
I've been using a navigation controller. When I want to either descend to another level of data or show my custom view I use the following:
[self.navigationController pushViewController:<view> animated:<BOOL>];
When I do this, I do get the viewWillAppear function to fire. I suppose this qualifies as "indirect" because I'm not calling the actual addSubView method myself. I don't know if this is 100% applicable to your application since I can't tell if you're using a navigation controller, but maybe it will provide a clue.
Firstly, the tab bar should be at the root level, ie, added to the window, as stated in the Apple documentation. This is key for correct behavior.
Secondly, you can use UITabBarDelegate / UINavigationBarDelegate to forward the notifications on manually, but I found that to get the whole hierarchy of view calls to work correctly, all I had to do was manually call
[tabBarController viewWillAppear:NO];
[tabBarController viewDidAppear:NO];
and
[navBarController viewWillAppear:NO];
[navBarController viewDidAppear:NO];
.. just ONCE before setting up the view controllers on the respective controller (right after allocation). From then on, it correctly called these methods on its child view controllers.
My hierarchy is like this:
window
UITabBarController (subclass of)
UIViewController (subclass of) // <-- manually calls [navController viewWill/DidAppear
UINavigationController (subclass of)
UIViewController (subclass of) // <-- still receives viewWill/Did..etc all the way down from a tab switch at the top of the chain without needing to use ANY delegate methods
Just calling the mentioned methods on the tab/nav controller the first time ensured that ALL the events were forwarded correctly. It stopped me needing to call them manually from the UINavigationBarDelegate / UITabBarControllerDelegate methods.
Sidenote:
Curiously, when it didn't work, the private method
- (void)transitionFromViewController:(UIViewController*)aFromViewController toViewController:(UIViewController*)aToViewController
.. which you can see from the callstack on a working implementation, usually calls the viewWill/Did.. methods but didn't until I performed the above (even though it was called).
I think it is VERY important that the UITabBarController is at window level though and the documents seem to back this up.
Hope that was clear(ish), happy to answer further questions.
As no answer is accepted and people (like I did) land here I give my variation. Though I am not sure that was the original problem. When the navigation controller is added as a subview to a another view you must call the viewWillAppear/Dissappear etc. methods yourself like this:
- (void) viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
[subNavCntlr viewWillAppear:animated];
}
- (void) viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewWillDisappear:animated];
[subNavCntlr viewWillDisappear:animated];
}
Just to make the example complete. This code appears in my ViewController where I created and added the the navigation controller into a view that I placed on the view.
- (void)viewDidLoad {
// This is the root View Controller
rootTable *rootTableController = [[rootTable alloc]
initWithStyle:UITableViewStyleGrouped];
subNavCntlr = [[UINavigationController alloc]
initWithRootViewController:rootTableController];
[rootTableController release];
subNavCntlr.view.frame = subNavContainer.bounds;
[subNavContainer addSubview:subNavCntlr.view];
[super viewDidLoad];
}
the .h looks like this
#interface navTestViewController : UIViewController <UINavigationControllerDelegate> {
IBOutlet UIView *subNavContainer;
UINavigationController *subNavCntlr;
}
#end
In the nib file I have the view and below this view I have a label a image and the container (another view) where i put the controller in. Here is how it looks. I had to scramble some things as this was work for a client.
Views are added "directly" by calling [view addSubview:subview].
Views are added "indirectly" by methods such as tab bars or nav bars that swap subviews.
Any time you call [view addSubview:subviewController.view], you should then call [subviewController viewWillAppear:NO] (or YES as your case may be).
I had this problem when I implemented my own custom root-view management system for a subscreen in a game. Manually adding the call to viewWillAppear cured my problem.
Correct way to do this is using UIViewController containment api.
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
// Do any additional setup after loading the view.
UIViewController *viewController = ...;
[self addChildViewController:viewController];
[self.view addSubview:viewController.view];
[viewController didMoveToParentViewController:self];
}
I use this code for push and pop view controllers:
push:
[self.navigationController pushViewController:detaiViewController animated:YES];
[detailNewsViewController viewWillAppear:YES];
pop:
[[self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:YES] viewWillAppear:YES];
.. and it works fine for me.
A very common mistake is as follows.
You have one view, UIView* a, and another one, UIView* b.
You add b to a as a subview.
If you try to call viewWillAppear in b, it will never be fired, because it is a subview of a
iOS 13 bit my app in the butt here. If you've noticed behavior change as of iOS 13 just set the following before you push it:
yourVC.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationFullScreen;
You may also need to set it in your .storyboard in the Attributes inspector (set Presentation to Full Screen).
This will make your app behave as it did in prior versions of iOS.
I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think that adding a view to the view hierarchy directly means calling -addSubview: on the view controller's view (e.g., [viewController.view addSubview:anotherViewController.view]) instead of pushing a new view controller onto the navigation controller's stack.
I think that adding a subview doesn't necessarily mean that the view will appear, so there is not an automatic call to the class's method that it will
I think what they mean "directly" is by hooking things up just the same way as the xcode "Navigation Application" template does, which sets the UINavigationController as the sole subview of the application's UIWindow.
Using that template is the only way I've been able to get the Will/Did/Appear/Disappear methods called on the object ViewControllers upon push/pops of those controllers in the UINavigationController. None of the other solutions in the answers here worked for me, including implementing them in the RootController and passing them through to the (child) NavigationController. Those functions (will/did/appear/disappear) were only called in my RootController upon showing/hiding the top-level VCs, my "login" and navigationVCs, not the sub-VCs in the navigation controller, so I had no opportunity to "pass them through" to the Nav VC.
I ended up using the UINavigationController's delegate functionality to look for the particular transitions that required follow-up functionality in my app, and that works, but it requires a bit more work in order to get both the disappear and appear functionality "simulated".
Also it's a matter of principle to get it to work after banging my head against this problem for hours today. Any working code snippets using a custom RootController and a child navigation VC would be much appreciated.
In case this helps anyone. I had a similar problem where my ViewWillAppear is not firing on a UITableViewController. After a lot of playing around, I realized that the problem was that the UINavigationController that is controlling my UITableView is not on the root view. Once I fix that, it is now working like a champ.
I just had this problem myself and it took me 3 full hours (2 of which googling) to fix it.
What turned out to help was to simply delete the app from the device/simulator, clean and then run again.
Hope that helps
[self.navigationController setDelegate:self];
Set the delegate to the root view controller.
In my case problem was with custom transition animation.
When set modalPresentationStyle = .custom viewWillAppear not called
in custom transition animation class need call methods:
beginAppearanceTransition and endAppearanceTransition
For Swift. First create the protocol to call what you wanted to call in viewWillAppear
protocol MyViewWillAppearProtocol{func myViewWillAppear()}
Second, create the class
class ForceUpdateOnViewAppear: NSObject, UINavigationControllerDelegate {
func navigationController(_ navigationController: UINavigationController, willShow viewController: UIViewController, animated: Bool){
if let updatedCntllr: MyViewWillAppearProtocol = viewController as? MyViewWillAppearProtocol{
updatedCntllr.myViewWillAppear()
}
}
}
Third, make the instance of ForceUpdateOnViewAppear to be the member of the appropriate class that have the access to the Navigation Controller and exists as long as Navigation controller exists. It may be for example the root view controller of the navigation controller or the class that creates or present it. Then assign the instance of ForceUpdateOnViewAppear to the Navigation Controller delegate property as early as possible.
In my case that was just a weird bug on the ios 12.1 emulator. Disappeared after launching on real device.
I have created a class that solves this problem.
Just set it as a delegate of your navigation controller, and implement simple one or two methods in your view controller - that will get called when the view is about to be shown or has been shown via NavigationController
Here's the GIST showing the code
ViewWillAppear is an override method of UIViewController class so adding a subView will not call viewWillAppear, but when you present, push , pop, show , setFront Or popToRootViewController from a viewController then viewWillAppear for presented viewController will get called.
My issue was that viewWillAppear was not called when unwinding from a segue. The answer was to put a call to viewWillAppear(true) in the unwind segue in the View Controller that you segueing back to
#IBAction func unwind(for unwindSegue: UIStoryboardSegue, ViewController subsequentVC: Any) {
viewWillAppear(true)
}
I'm not sure this is the same problem that I solved.
In some occasions, method doesn't executed with normal way such as "[self methodOne]".
Try
- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
[self performSelector:#selector(methodOne)
withObject:nil afterDelay:0];
}
You should only have 1 UIViewController active at any time. Any subviews you want to manipulate should be exactly that - subVIEWS - i.e. UIView.
I use a simlple technique for managing my view hierarchy and have yet to run into a problem since I started doing things this way. There are 2 key points:
a single UIViewController should be used to manage "a screen's worth"
of your app
use UINavigationController for changing views
What do I mean by "a screen's worth"? It's a bit vague on purpose, but generally it's a feature or section of your app. If you've got a few screens with the same background image but different overlays/popups etc., that should be 1 view controller and several child views. You should never find yourself working with 2 view controllers. Note you can still instantiate a UIView in one view controller and add it as a subview of another view controller if you want certain areas of the screen to be shown in multiple view controllers.
As for UINavigationController - this is your best friend! Turn off the navigation bar and specify NO for animated, and you have an excellent way of switching screens on demand. You can push and pop view controllers if they're in a hierarchy, or you can prepare an array of view controllers (including an array containing a single VC) and set it to be the view stack using setViewControllers. This gives you total freedom to change VC's, while gaining all the advantages of working within Apple's expected model and getting all events etc. fired properly.
Here's what I do every time when I start an app:
start from a window-based app
add a UINavigationController as the window's rootViewController
add whatever I want my first UIViewController to be as the rootViewController of the nav
controller
(note starting from window-based is just a personal preference - I like to construct things myself so I know exactly how they are built. It should work fine with view-based template)
All events fire correctly and basically life is good. You can then spend all your time writing the important bits of your app and not messing about trying to manually hack view hierarchies into shape.