UITabBarControllers and UINavigationControllers - iphone

Problem
I have an app with a UITabBarController and four different tabs. Three of these tabs are tables which you can click on each row and it would take you to another view.
Question
How would I implement that in terms of navigation? Should I create a UITabBarController with Navigation Controllers as tabs (as shown in image 1) or with View Controllers as tabs (as shown in image 2) with each View Controller having its own Navigation Controller property?
Image 1:
Image 2:
I tried both but its not working well and its confusing. I'd like to know which is more appropriate so I can focus on that method and then see why it's not working.

The first method you propose is the only method. View controllers have a navigationController property, but it will only return something if your view controller is currently contained within a parent navigation controller.
So to be clear: you should have a UITabBarController which contains your navigation controllers, one navigation controller for each tab that you want to have a navigation hierarchy in.

Related

How to implement both UIViewController stack behaviour

I noticed that WhatsApp has a somewhat neat navigation behaviour on their iOS app. See the following:
There are two navigation stack behaviour here:
UINavigationController as a child of UITabBarController
UITabBarController as a child of UINavigationController
How to achieve both of this at the same time, just like WhatsApp? Does it uses a custom UINavigationController?
Currently my implementation only does number 2 and not number 1. I do know that to do number 1 I have to make the UINavigationController as a child of UITabBarController, but I will lose number 2.
However if I implemented both, I will get weird result where I get two navigation bar, like:
In the example you give, it looks like they have a UITabBarController as the root view controller. Settings is a view controller inside a navigation controller.
When you tap Data & Storage, it pushes another view controller on to the Settings nav controller's stack.
When you press Help it does the same - but the tab bar is hidden when the Help view controller is pushed on the stack.
See hide / show tab bar when push / back. swift for some ways to do this

Show UITabBar on UIViewControllers that are not part of the UITabBar?

I have an iOS app written in Swift with UITabBarController with 5 UIViewControllers. Now, I have a bunch of UIViewControllers that are not part of the UITabBarController. I'd like to be able to show that same tabbar but I have no idea how to do that. Any clue?
More details: This is one of the View Controllers that the tabbar has. I use storyboard references and split my view controllers into separate more manageable storyboards.
So, the big picture:
There's no initial ViewController since I use storyboardId to get to the initial Navigation Controller. From there we have a ViewController embedded in the same Navigation controller. In that ViewController, there are 2 Container views - one of the size of the bottom ViewController that contains the "hamburger" button that toggles the other Container View which has an embedded UITableView in. When a specific cell is selected it should go to Profile ViewController that's not even in the same storyboard. The segue is set to be Push. Either way, doesn't show the UITabBar on the Profile ViewController
how you doing?
I don't know if I understood, but you are trying to show tabbar after going to another screen, right? If the answer is 'yes', try to change your segue to show(e.g. push).
-----Edit-----
You can do with two ways:
Presenting Modally -> using Current Context
Use push(e.g.) with a navigation view controller, you can also hide the navigation bar if you go to Navigation controller -> Attributes inspector -> Navigation Controller -> Uncheck Shows Navigation Bar
Hope now it works!
Best regards

Which type of tabbar - navigation controller should I use with a storyboard?

I am attempting to connect a tabbar to a navigation controller.
I have the following 4 options (see image).
In the tutorial I'm following however, it says that two options will be shown only (viewControllers, and performSegewithIdentifier) so which one should I use?
Ayrad, in your storyboard, since you want to use a navigation and a tab bar controller, the main controller must be the tab and then the navigation controller, so you will arrange you canvas in order to first have the TabBarController then the NavigationController connected to it, and then a view connected to both of them, this way you will have a view with both the tab and the navigation controller.

Customizing UIModalViewController Size and Having a Navigation Bar

I've created my own ProfileUIViewController class that is a UINavigationControllerDelegate. I display this view in two ways:
From an IBAction within A-UIViewController.m, as a UIModalViewController. A-UIViewController has a UINavigationBar when it's loaded, but when I display the modal, it no longer has the navigation bar.
From clicking a table cell row within B-UIViewController.m, by pushing it onto the stack. B-UIViewController has a UINavigationBar when it's loaded, and the ProfileViewController keeps the navBar as desired :)
What I am looking to do is keep the UINavigationBar when the view is loaded as a modal in case 1, filling in INSIDE the UINavigationBar instead of laying over the entire view. (IE, I would like the modal to appear within A-UIViewConroller underneath the navBar - making it a smaller size)
Can someone help me with this? Do I need to make my own custom ModalViewController class - wouldn't this be ProfileUIViewController? Does it need some instance methods that I'm not giving it? Any direction would be great:)
The navigation bar is managed by the navigation controller, not by your view controller. When you push your view controller into the navigation controller, the navigation controller uses the information in the navigationItem to determine what to put in the navigation bar. But when you display your view controller modally, it's not inside any navigation controller so there is no bar.
One simple solution for the modal case is to create a new UINavigationController with your view controller as its root view controller, and display that modally instead of displaying your view controller directly.

One UINavigationcontroller for the whole app?

i´ve created a UINavigationController in my appdelegate and initialized it with my "modelselectionViewController". This VC has different uibuttons and when touched, a new VC ("modelViewController") is pushed on the navigationstack.
This "modelViewController" acts as my template view and has a uitabbarcontroller with different tabs. The first VC is shown immediately but any changes on the navigationcontroller doesn´t work. I would like to set the name of the title but that navigationcontroller is null.
NSLog(#"navi: %#",
self.navigationController);
If i change my code to push the different VC when touching the different tabs, navigation works but only with a third level of navigation hierachy.
I want to know if it´s possible to use only one navigationcontroller for all my different tabs. Hope i made my setup clear. Appreciate all your help. thanks
I think you might want to read Combining ViewControllers.
In general, you should have the tabbar controller as a 'root' controller, not as a 'child' controller. A quick search in Apple's doc didn't yield a formal 'forbidden', but it might be.
If you create a UITabBarController from a view that's managed in a UINavigationController (ie: if you create a navigationcontroller first, and it's still around when you create the tabbarcontroller), you're starting a fight with the frameworks. Here's the admonishment from the docs on combining viewcontroller interfaces:
An application that uses a tab bar
controller can also use navigation
controllers in one or more tabs. When
combining these two types of view
controller in the same user interface,
the tab bar controller always acts as
the wrapper for the navigation
controllers. You never want to push a
tab bar controller onto the navigation
stack of a navigation controller.
Doing so creates an unusual situation
whereby the tab bar appears only while
a specific view controller is at the
top of the navigation stack. Tab bars
are designed to be persistent, and so
this transient approach can be
confusing to users.
I read that as "if it doesn't break something that we haven't thought of on the next update, we might reject the app anyway because it's 'confusing to users.'"
I suppose you could kill the whole navigation hierarchy and the navigationcontroller if you don't need to return there (like if you just used it for a one-time setup screen). Or you can look into other options for navigating within a viewcontroller that's managed by the navigationcontroller.
One thing to try might be to navigate to a UITableView, and use its cells to push a modal view onto the navigation stack. That would be familiar to users and also jive with the intent of the navigation classes.