I am relatively new to Objective-C / iPhone programming, and have only created single view applications thusfar. I am interested in creating an app soon than will have a "wireframe" in a sense that allows me navigate the various views of my app using buttons. So I guess my questions are:
What do I need to do to make an app that has more than one view
How to I link them with UIActions in buttons to navigate the various screens (ex a back button to go to a previous screen)
and I may have more as I go, but this is a start.
Thanks!
Since no one really had a clear helpful answer, I will share my own conclusion. Xcode 4 offers a very intuitive and interactive way to create multiple MVCs and segue between them even providing the interface to travel between views. I found out how to use this feature from Paul Haggarty's iOS course on iTunes U. I highly recommend it.
Joey
You'd can use a combination of, multiple UIViewController and or UINavigationController's. Utilizing methods such as presentModalViewController:animated: and pushViewController:.
Related
I am very new to iPhone development, i am developing one sample application using xcode.
I am referring on-line tutorials and examples to build my first application.
I want to try multi screen/view application where i want to display specific screens on some specific events like button clicks.
I googled for tutorials on multi screen iPhone apps, but i am getting different ways of doing it.
I am confused in-between:
1. Navigation based application.
2. Window based application.
3. View based application.
Which application type do i need to chose for multi view/screen application. Is it that we can't create multi view/screen application using 2nd and 3rd type, i think this should not be the case, but i am confused.
what i have done so far.
I have created one window based application where i have one login page (text fields and click buttons) i want to extend this application to display main screen/error screen based on the login result.
I have created 2 .xib files for main screen and error screen(with there corresponding .m and .h controller files), now i want to remove login screen and display main screen/error screen, but i don't have idea how to archive this when we are in window based application.
can some one point to useful tutorials/examples that can explain this scenario.
Before getting into any online tutorials it'd be better to go through apple's guides.
Following guides could be a good start:
App Programming Guide - Design Basics To understand the basics of iOS development
Human Interface Guidelines
and
View Programming Guide
To understand and implement different view controllers
hope this helps your question regarding delegation
http://www.switchonthecode.com/tutorials/creating-your-first-iphone-application-with-interface-builder
If you're using storyboards with scenes and segues (iOS 5+), this tutorial might help clear things out.
I'm developing an app in IOS using Storyboard for the Ipad. I want to add UISplitViewController as a subview of my app. I want to generate this kind of output (see below image). when user click on FirstView's 'Next' button, a second view-splitview should appear.
Output:
But Apple's guidelines says that we can't push UISplitViewController as a subview of module. if we use a UISplitViewController, it has to be visible at all the times in our app.
so
when i tried to add any splitviewcontroller directly into the storyboard, it generated the error .
Split View Controllers cannot be pushed to a Navigation Controller
I dig around the net but unfortunately couldn't find any proper help.
is there any official alternative to use such a kind of facility by Apple itself?
or any link to the working code or samples to implement such a kind of functionality.
If i'm using third party solution, will my app get banned by Apple App store as they don't allow to do so?
I think this is a very basic kind of functionality which many people needs to implement in their app as a submodule. So there must be a inbuilt facility by apple. may b i don't know about it.
any help would be greatly appreciated.
This isn't an answer to your exact question, but may help in part.
I have an app that uses a UISplitViewController that is a subview of a UITabBarController.
This goes against Apple guidelines, but was desirable for my design that started originally as an iPhone app, and that I wanted to convert to a Universal app. I also wanted to maintain the UI convention of my app that the iPhone users were familiar with.
Unsurprisingly, there were problems with the notification of the orientation to the various UISplitViewControllers that weren't visible (though it would seem that Apple could support this if they chose to).
The workaround was to use the new API added in iOS 5.0,
splitViewController:shouldHideViewController:inOrientation:
...and always return NO. Not the ideal UI arrangement, but it works, and was accepted by Apple as an app update.
So, (clearly) you'll need to do this programmatically, rather than use Storyboards, but I think if you can get it working, Apple may approve. I wouldn't recommend you risk this if you can avoid it, however.
is it possible please to build small application with interface builder without coding, just to make sure that my interfaces are well organised ?
For the navigation interface, no. You need to programmatically push views into the navigation stack.
Interface Builder is a layout tool for individual screens. Connecting them in a navigation flow happens in code.
I second #fluchtpunkt's comment that you might want to look at publishing your content as an iBook rather than a native app. Or you could look at one of the html-to-native-app solutions like PhoneGap or Appcellerator. I've never worked with either of them, but theoretically if you have any HTML ability at all, they flatten out the learning curve of simple app building very significantly.
If you just want to test your interface you should probably use a mockup tool. I have good experience with blueprint. Or try something like interface (http://www.lesscode.co.nz/interface). Here you can create a GUI prototype and export it to XCode (maybe you can run the app at the simulator with navigation after this operation…) but i don’t know because i haven’t any experience this tool!
This is Cocoa Touch (et al), iPhone, XCode only.
After completing my first commercial iPhone app, I'm struggling a bit to find a way to start and expand an app from scratch which gives the most linear development (i.e., the least scrapping, re-write or re-organization of code, classes and resources) as app specs change and I learn more (mostly about what Cocoa Touch and other classes and components are designed to be capable of and the limitation of their customization).
So. File, New Project. Blank window based app? Create the controllers I need, with .xib if necessary, so I can localize them and do changes requested by the customer in IB? And then always subclass each class except those extremely unlikely to be customized? (I mean framework classes such as UIButton, CLLocation etc here.)
The question is a generic 'approach' type question, so I'll be happy to listen to handy dev practices you've found paid off. Do you have any tips for which 're-usable components' you've found have become very useful in subsequent projects?
Clients often describe programs in terms of 'first, this screen appears, and then you can click this button and on the new screen you can select... (and so on)' terms. Are there any good guides to go from there to vital early-stage app construction choices, i.e. 'functions-features-visuals description to open-ended-app-architecture'?
For example, in my app I went from NavBar, to Toolbar with items, to Toolbar with two custom subviews in order to accommodate the functions-features-visuals description. Maybe you have also done such a thing and have some advice to offer?
I'm also looking for open-ended approaches to sharing large ("loaded data") objects, or even simple booleans, between controllers and invoking methods in another controller, specifically starting processes such as animation and loading (example: trigger a load from a URL in the second tab viewcontroller after making sure an animation has been started in the first tab viewcontroller), as these two features apply to the app architecture building approach you advocate.
Any handy pointers appreciated. Thanks guys.
Closing this up as there's no single correct answer and was more suitable for the other forum, had I known it existed when I asked :)
If you want to know the method I ended up with, it's basically this:
Window-based blank app
Navigation Controller controls all, whether I need to or not (hide when not used)
Tab Bar Controller if necessary
Connect everything <-- unhelpful, I know.
Set up and check autorotation, it might get added to some view later.
Add one viewcontroller with xib for each view, you never know when they want an extra button somewhere. It's easier to copy code than make the max ultra superdynamic adjustable tableviewcontroller that does all list-navigation, etc.
Re-use a viewcontroller only when just the content differs in it, such as a detail viewcontroller.
Minimize code in each viewcontroller by writing functions and methods and shove them in a shared .m
Everything that's shared ends up in the App delegate, except subclassed stuff.
Modal viewcontrollers are always dynamically created and never have an xib.
There are tons of resources concerning coding on the iPhone. Most of them concern "how do I do X", e.g. "setup a navigation controller", or "download text from a URL". All good and fine.
What I'm more interested in now are the questions that follow the simpler stuff - how to best structure your complex UI, or your app, or the common problems that arise. To illustrate: a book like "Beginning iPhone 3 Development" tells you how to set up a multi viewcontroller app with an top 'switcher' viewcontroller that switches between views owned by other view controllers. Fine, but you're only told how to do that, and nothing about the problems that can follow: for example, if I use their paradigm to switch to a UINavigationViewController, the Navigation bar ends up too low on the screen, because UINavigationViewController expects to be the topmost UIViewController (apparently). Also, delegate methods (e.g. relating to orientation changes) go to the top switcher view controller, not the actual controller responsible for the current view. I have fixes for these things but they feel like hacks which makes me unhappy and makes me feel like I'm missing something.
One productive thing might be to look at some open source iPhone projects (see this question). But aside from that?
Update
To clarify: I suppose what I'm asking about could be summarised as "Recipes and Gotchas for iPhone development". The sort of things that are of interest to developers, but aren't covered in any of the iPhone books etc. that I've seen, such as:
I'm writing an iPad app and want a UISplitViewController presented to the user only some of the time, which Apple seem to be saying I can't do. Is it possible? How?
Apple don't give me a way to stylise my app in a convenient, across the board way (e.g. font tweaks, or colours). How can I approach styling my app?
Memory management isn't made any easier by some of the inconsistencies in UIViewController method names (e.g. viewDidUnload is not the opposite of viewDidLoad, despite the name). Is there a consistent easy way to tidy that up and make view controller memory management less error prone?
How can I consistently and easily test my view controllers for behaving correctly when a memory warning comes in? It's easy to simulate a memory warning in the Simulator, but if the UI I want to test is showing (and is a 'leaf level' view controller), it won't get its view unloaded because it is currently visible.
N.B. I'm not actually asking the above questions here -- I think I have decent answers to them! -- just giving examples of 'good' questions that illustrate this stackoverflow question.
The WWDC talks available on iTunes U (at http://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2010/) have some great information about structuring, especially in the Application Frameworks section.
If you're talking about code, use the Model/View/Controller pattern like in most Web applications:
The model code defines the objects that your program represents. A time tracker app, for example, might have model objects like Task, TimeSlice, and User (especially in a network setting).
The view code is provided for "free" with the iOS SDK, unless you need specialised view code. These are UIImageView, UIButton, etc.
The controller code bridges the 'gap' between the model and view. The controller will change the views to reflect the model selected by the user and facilitate the selection of model objects.
This is the base design pattern for any iPhone app, and it's the one that most will use.
If, on the other hand, you refer to what we in my company call UX (user experience) design, however, you can't beat the Apple HIG guidelines in the Apple iOS SDK documentation set, available online or in Xcode from the Help menu.
The other thing I recommend quite highly is to play around with some test/dummy code. Nothing can top experience. Experimenting with the iOS SDK and getting your hands dirty will allow you to truly learn the best ways to design apps.
Edit:
Also, delegate methods (e.g. relating to orientation changes) go to the top switcher view controller, not the actual controller responsible for the current view.
Can you clarify? In all of the apps I've written, the currently shown view controller receives the orientation change methods. Note that there are two methods. shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation: allows you to decide if the view should rotate, and didRotateFromInterfaceOrientation: allows you to re-layout the view if necessary.
Please go through this link. In this they have explained clearly about design patterns.
http://www.raywenderlich.com/46988/ios-design-patterns
You might want to consider watching videos like the CS193p course from Stanford on iTunes U. They go through the most important parts of iOS development in deep, and give some source code.
As far as I can tell, there isn't a book or resource which deals with the sort of advanced gotchas and recipes that I was looking for. Loads of useful resources exist, but just not addressing the stuff I'm thinking about.