I wondered how I can make a NSTableView to behave like a UITableView on iOS. For example, splitting the content into sections as well as the typical behaviour of the section headers.
Is that possible? If so, how?
Thank you very much.
Check NoodleStickyRowTableView:
http://www.noodlesoft.com/blog/2009/09/25/sticky-section-headers-in-nstableview/
It's part of NoodleKit:
https://github.com/MrNoodle/NoodleKit
One of the differences is that UITableView's "cells" are actually Views, while NSTableView's are proper cells. Views suck up more memory and there's a bit of work involved in getting NSTableView to accept views like cells, then a bit more to optimize it so that if you have a huge list it isn't too memory intesnive.
Luckily it's already (mostly) been done, and there's a github project:
1) https://github.com/Perspx/PXListView#readme (also check his blog for more info)
2) http://blog.atebits.com/2008/12/fast-scrolling-in-tweetie-with-uitableview/
Good luck
I wasted several days on this - so you don't have to.
There is a Twitter UI framework TwUI which they went to a lot of trouble to get their desktop clients to look and behave like the iPhone. The Appkit is showing its age these days.
The con with this library is you can't add NSViews to their TWUIViews.
This maybe fine if you haven't spent a lot of time creating custom nsviews.
You can try this fork which I hacked to mimic the sticky header view.
It has group based tableviews like uitableview.
https://github.com/johndpope/osx-stickyheaders
It turns out Apple have a nice sample library here
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/samplecode/TableViewPlayground/Introduction/Intro.html
And a simplified version here which demonstrates the FloatsGroupRows property with this line
[self.tableView setFloatsGroupRows:YES]
which for all intents and purposes makes the nstableview / sections look like a uitableview.
https://github.com/TomLiu/PlayTableView
The con with that is - it's not available for cell based table views.
It is only available on View Based tableviews.
Since Microsoft have recently reversed engineered UIKit including the UITableView - in c++, it may one day someone be so kind to port this back to OSX. An exercise for the reader.
https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC/blob/master/Frameworks/UIKit/UITableView.mm
Related
I'm working in a company where we have several iOS developers and we use GIT to work in the same projects together. We never use Storyboards or .xib files in our development process as it's nearly impossible to merge them correctly.
With the introduction of the iOS7 I thought about the fundamental differences between Storyboards and coding all the UI "the old way", without the use of Interface Builder.
Is there anyone here who does just that? And most importantly, is there something you CAN do in Storyboards that you can't do in code in XCode 5?
I'm going to split your question into two: NIBs, and storyboards.
As far as NIBs are concerned, source control issues can be painful but manageable, mainly because you've typically got one NIB file per view controller. You could imagine a situation where you have two developers working on two different sections of your NIB powered app without any merging issues. Storyboards are different, since you have one single file that describes most - if not all - of the UI of your application. Clearly there is a far greater potential for conflict issues there.
NIBs can be extremely useful and time saving, if used correctly. Here's an example: the iPhoto App on iPad has a very complex UI. The vast majority of that UI is laid out programatically. However, the app also uses NIBs to load in graphical elements which are then laid out in code. This is how the brush panel works - all the brushes are created in a NIB. This means that Apple don't have to have dozens of identical image/image view alloc/init pieces of code. All the creation can happen in a NIB (this was discussed in some detail in a WWDC 2012 session on the iPhoto UI - it's well worth tracking down).
So NIBs - sometimes good, can save you a lot of time, and whilst there are merge issues they can in many cases be easily managed and handled.
Then we come to storyboards. Storyboards are interesting. On the one hand, they are extremely helpful and useful for straightforward apps and developers new to the platform. I've just converted a UINavigationController based app from NIBs to storyboards and found some significant time savings (particularly around table views, since with storyboards you can take advantage of prototype cells).
However, if you're working on a large scale project with several developers I'm not convinced storyboards are that beneficial. There are, as you say, big issues with merge conflicts, and unlike NIBs it's not easy to resolve them since that single storyboard file controls all of your app UI.
Here's what I'd suggest (and feel free to ignore me!) - if you're currently developing apps and doing your layout/UI entirely in code consider whether NIBs might save you time. They may well not - they're not for everybody - but it's well worth at least considering. You may be surprised at how many large apps actually use NIBs (iPhoto, as I mentioned, but also many built-in apps provided by Apple, as well as many popular third party apps by large teams). I probably wouldn't consider storyboards unless you were a sole developer working on an app with fairly straightforward navigation. That's not to do down storyboards in any way - I love using them - it's just they're not really suitable for collaboration.
Somebody posted this comment in reply to your question - I wanted to discuss it:
There is nothing you can do in storyboard and can't do in code. Objects, gesture recognizers, segues, even constraints - are all available for you to build programmatically
This is technically true, but in reality there are things in storyboards/NIBs that are much easier than code. A good example of this is auto layout. Whilst you can certainly manage your auto layout contraints entirely in code, the harsh reality is that the ASCII auto layout representation is much harder to work with than the visual representation you get in IB. This is especially true on XCode 5, where there are massive improvements to auto layout in IB (I can't detail it too much as it's still under NDA, but Apple publically talk a bit about the changes here).
For me the only big drawback of storyboards is the slow loading time and the usual lag that comes when navigating the storyboard. I'm not talking about 2-5 view controllers apps. I'm talking about 10 and more...
My personal preference is smaller storyboards if I really have to use them(UITableView prototype cells) or just plain xibs.
Doing it in just plain code is just a matter of .... do you have enough time on your hands? :) Usually you wont gain a lot from doing it this way.
You should consider these issues in your dessision:
Development time -
Obviously, working with the xcode UI designer is much more faster and easy to learn when creating new applications from scratch.
In the programmatically way, you will have to define in code each and every element property you'll want to set.
Working with storyboard will make the development process much faster.
Code reuse -
When working with storyboard you will have to bind UI elements to the controller with bullets that adds additional hidden code in the storyboard file. Same stubs are added when creating segues between controller.
This addition hidden code will make make it more difficult to reuse the controllers in other apps that you'll build.
If you are planning to make mass reuse of you controllers code, than creating the UI elements programmatically will be more suitable.
Source code integration -
Conflicts resolving is a common thing when several developers commits changes to the file.
Creating and changing UI elements with storyboard additional changes are added to the storyboard file that sometimes makes the conflicts resolve kind of tricky.
On the other hand, when changing UI elements programmatically only the changes that you'll make will be added the the controller file.
Thank you for reading this.
These are my first steps in the iPhone Ipad app programming.
In order to learn from scratch (and because I know my app would need dynamic views), I decided not to use Interface Builder.
My question is(regarding the fact that I don't use IB): how would one use Views and Controllers?
I think I understand the MVC concept as it is repeated over and over again in the tutorials I follow, but after the "MVC explanation" part, nothing is made to make it clear "on the field" and closer to the real world (Earth being Xcode here).
Worse, sometimes it seems that some tutorials mix these two concepts up and use one word to say the other.
I read around here a lot of questions (and answers of course) based on the matter but I still don't get it. Sometimes it's too generic, sometimes it's too specific (for me at least).
For what I think I understood, the UIView is the static View when the View Controller is the logic which links the View to the data and those 3 concepts must be separated.
This separation, while a bit clearer with the use of Interface Builder seems to get quite blurry when you code everything as it becomes a virtual soup.
Technically, should I create a specific ".h" and ".m" file for each View AND ALSO for each associated Controller?
If I understand the MVC pattern, it's seems that I should but when I follow tutorials (without IB) it is never the case, view and controllers are created and manipulated within the same implementation files.
Any high level (I'm a noob, don't forget) but still applicable explanation of the use and best practices?
Let's say I want to create a simple app with a green view I can swipe to get to a red view.
I know for sure that I would need at least an:
xxxappDelegate.h
xxxappDelegate.m
xxxView.h
xxxView.m
What else?
1)Where should I put the the second view (along with the first one in "xxxView" or should I create another class h and m file?)?
2) What would the controller(s) do, for that kind of application? In which files would they be created and in which files would they be invoked and how would they "control" the related view?
3) Mainly, regarding to MVC pattern and the fact that there would be no IB, how would you organize that app?
I know it's a lot if you go into the details and code but that's not the point here.
Thank you. This - as simple as it seems - would be of a great help and is not as easily found in tutorials as you might think.
I understand the tutorials I read but they are so particular. As soon as I try to create something on my own which is not a "Hello World" screen, I realize that something is missing, logic wise.
Thank you very much for your help.
Sorry, but I can't get past your first paragraph. If you don't use Interface Builder, you are not going to be a successful iOS programmer. It's that simple. The best advice I've ever read about this is in this Aaron Hillegass interview:
Experienced Cocoa programmers put a lot of the smarts of their application in the NIB file. As a result, their project has a lot less code. Programmers who have spent a few years working in Visual Studio get freaked out. They ask me stuff like, "Can I write Cocoa apps without using Interface Builder? I like to see the code. Maybe I can just explicitly create my windows and the views that go on it?"
It is difficult to explain how the NIB file (and a few other scary ideas) create leverage. It is that leverage that enables one guy in his basement to compete with a team of engineers at Microsoft or Adobe. It is like I showed a chain saw to a early American colonist, and he said, "Can I cut down the tree without starting the engine? I don't like the noise. Maybe I can just bang it against the tree?"
Yes, it's hard to generalize after reading specific tutorials, but you will learn. I thought the learning curve was insurmountable when I first started, but if I can become a programmer that gets paid to write Cocoa software, you can too. Just keep reading and practicing. Don't fight the tools--use them.
Early:
In order to learn from scratch (and because I know my app would need
dynamic views), I decided not to use Interface Builder.
Later:
As soon as I try to create something on my own which is not a "Hello
World" screen, I realize that something is missing, logic wise.
I think what is missing logic wise is that you have accepted your assumption that Interface Builder was a crutch and that to learn "from scratch" you had to avoid using it. You are trying to learn the MVC design pattern but you are not willing to use the tools that have been designed to support it.
In Apple's own documentation they discuss the fact that sometimes there is value in having combined roles—Model Controllers and View Controllers—and that is worth reading, as it may explain some of the code examples you're reviewing. But my primary advice would be: before assuming you know better than the people who built the tools, trying using them the way they recommend. It might be an eye-opener.
Additions later:
OK, so to try and actually answer your questions...
1)Where should I put the the second view (along with the first one in
"xxxView" or should I create another class h and m file?)?
If I am understanding correctly and the two views you are thinking of here are the red and the blue displays to the user, you wouldn't have a second view—what you would do, whether in IB or in code—is to have an element in your view on which you changed a colour property... This would be done programmatically whether you were setting up the parent view in IB or in code.
2) What would the controller(s) do, for that kind of application? In
which files would they be created and in which files would they be
invoked and how would they "control" the related view?
There would be a view controller that would implement the gesture support, and would provide a method for changing the colour of the item in the view between blue and red when that swipe gesture was successfully received. I would have a ViewController.h and and ViewController.m. I think if you were implementing the View entirely in code, it would be implemented in the ViewController.m rather than having a separate View.m. (If you were using IB, you would have a ViewController.h, ViewController.m and ViewController.xib, with the latter providing the basic setup of the view elements and layers.)
You would create a ViewController instance in your AppDelegate.
3) Mainly, regarding to MVC pattern and the fact that there would be
no IB, how would you organize that app?
As above.
If you really insist on going without IB (and I agree 100% with SSteve) then in addition to the files you list you will also want to use a UIViewController. Now, it is important to know that you only need to create header and implementation files when you are adding or changing default behavior.
In you case, the view can probably just be a generic UIView, so you wouldn't need the files. What you would do is subclass UIViewController, and put the swipe logic there. In the swipe logic code you would probably just change the background color of the view.
You would instantiate the view controller in the delegate (in this case anyway) and create the view in the view controller's loadView method. That is required since you won't be using IB.
Personally though, I think that IB does a great job of encouraging proper MVC patterns, and if you are just starting then you should go with IB.
In practice you mostly do not make classes for views, unless they need to do custom drawing or display.
For lightweight configuration of views, that is often done in the viewController's viewDidLoad (or I guess in your case loadView) method.
Yes it's a good idea to keep model and view separated, but that's also balanced with the equally good idea to reduce the amount of code that exists. The less code that is written, the fewer bugs you will have.
Since you are just starting out at this point I would absolutely start by using ARC, and using IB - even though I'm sure you're tired of hearing that from everyone, I'll give you an alternate take. Less code means fewer bugs. And the fact that so many experienced developers are telling you to use it should be a giant clue about what a productive path forward is. I mean, are you doing this to build applications or learn every corner of the UIView class?
To speak to your code example, you do not need the UIView custom class. Just create use a UIViewController's main view as a container view, place a UIView inside with the background set to red. On swipe (using a gesture recognizer attached to the container view) call the UIVew method to swap in a new green-background UIView for the existing red view, you can even define the transition style.
Or create a scroll view in the container view, set up the red and green view inside the scroll view, set the content size and enable paging on the scrollview.
Or create a custom UIView class as you had, listen for touch events and slowly adjust two subview positions to follow the drag action.
Or use an OpenGL backed view, and based on the gesture recognizer pan the scene you are observing with two triangles for a green rectangle and two triangles for a red rectangle.
I'm the programmatic guy, and I simply don't want to use Interface Builder. I feel out of control, and besides that my GUI is about 90% custom all the time.
Literally every book does everything in Interface Builder and claims that this is the one and only great way to have real MVC going on.
Example: One of those books mentions that programmatically creating an UINavigationController with an Root View Controller and everything else that belongs in there is a big mess and won't be reusable when porting to the iPad, while doing this in XIB is a clever decision. Then the port to iPad using UISplitViewController will be a simple task.
So when I make iPhone apps and want to port those to the iPad too, what strategies work to reuse as much code as possible? I'd like to learn more about how to separate my code and achieve a better overall architectural design without using Interface Builder.
For those who want to tell me I must go with IB: Again, I do a lot of custom UI where IB is often just in the way. And not to mention all the animations. I really have my reasons. For people who make default UI IB is really fine - but please, I don't want to start a fight for IB vs programmatical UI or default UI vs custom UI! It's all about how to achieve great reusable code when doing everything programmatically, and both have their pros and cons.
Although you did not ask for it, I feel compelled to make the case for why people in general (perhaps not you) should consider IB, and then address the issue of custom components.
I use a lot of animations and custom components. And I love to use IB...
The key is to use IB for its strengths, and then decide what to do with the rest from there. What then are the strongest points of IB? Connections, placement, auto-resizing and customizations.
Connections are linking aspects of views and controllers together. It's faster in IB to drag out a few connections to delegates or references, than it is to write the code that forms the connections. And, it's a quick place to review all links to the UI you are building.
Placement IB also does well at. There's a fair amount of code involved in setting up any GGRect correctly. Not only is it easier to enter and review coordinate and size details in IB, but the tool automatically sizes a lot of elements properly for the container and the control, and offers many guides to help things line up properly - that kind of thing can take a lot of repeated testing to get right.
Related is auto-resizing. Although I don't feel that many screens can actually have auto-reiszing rules that rotate the screen and come out the other side looking just right (I almost always do rotated views as a separate XIB file), there still are a lot of shifts that can occur in the course of running your application that make it really useful to have these defined just right. The best example of this is the enlarged status bar while you are on a call.
Lastly comes customization. This again can be a lot of tedious code to write; try setting up all of the properties on a UILabel manually and it'll have you yearning for quick changes in IB.
With all that said, what is a good approach to custom components? I like to use UIViews in IB screens, with the class type set to a custom UIView that then fills out the display at runtime. But at least IB helps me get composition, placement and auto-resizing just right with minimum fuss, and also wire aspects of that custom view into a controller.
The one thing that would really lend IB to use with custom components is if it would simply let me set values for any simple properties the custom view had - then I could adjust parameters like a corner radius or whatever else I had going on.
I urge you to think on IB a little more, as it's a huge productivity boost when used correctly. There should be nothing about IB that gets in the way, it's there to boost your output.
One book I really liked was Erica Sadun's iPhone Cookbook 1st edition. It did everything programmatically.
Unfortunately the second edition is bloated.
If you reuse lots of your custom UI objects, it would make sense to write a code which
reads a plist (or a more general XML file) specifying how the custom UI objects should be placed / animated
and then creates your custom UI objects accordingly.
It's like writing a mini-xib file format tailored to your UI objects; you can also feel that you're in control of everything, as an added bonus.
(source: kominetz.com)
Hello. I'm diving into iOS development and am building my own alarm app to become familiar with the SDK. My questions are...
I've played around with UITableViews a bit, but I don't understand how I would implement the table at the top half of this form. If I had to guess, I would say it's a single UITableView, defined with one section and four rows, is that right?
If so, to implement it, would I just "hardcode" the cellForRowAtIndexPath function to create each cell manually?
If not, is there an adopted approach to defining the layout and functionality of these types of settings pages?
Row #3 has a switch in it, is this a predefined cell style or a custom cell style that I have to define myself?
Rows #1, 2, and 4 take the user to new views when they're touched. Is this a predefined style and or do I just implement the standard didSelectRowAtIndexPath functionality to push a new view onto the stack?
Thanks so much in advance for your help! I'm going to continue researching these questions right now.
In answer to your questions:
Yes
Yes
n/a
No, you have to add a UISwitch to the cell's contentView. Tip: Look at Apple's UICatalog sample code (controls sections) to see how to implement a tableview with different controls in different rows.
Just use didSelectRow...
For most apps, you want to implement the Application Preferences settings plist that will be used by the device's Settings application. It's typically a good idea to keep the settings for your app consistent with how the settings work in other apps.
This is a question for iPhone development and I'm hopin someone can point me to the right direction on how i should go about implementing this.
I am trying to write a chat application that supports emoticons/smileys. Where the smiley/emoticon images are stored can be figured out later. I think few iphone applications out there are already doing this (i.e. skype + ebuddy(?)) but not sure what method they went for.
After searching around, there seems to be a few ways of doing this (i think):
bubble chat style which has been discussed before. UITableViewController with custom UITableViewCell. For emoticons, might have to do a whole bunch of calculations to determine where to stick a UIImageView for each emoticon.
Use UIWebView as the whole "window". Style it to look like bubble chat. Takes away any manual calculations on image smiley placements.
I have no idea what the performance is like for each of these two methods, how complex it can get etc, so any comments and guidance will help for sure. Cheers
If you use custom UITableViewCell, then I'd probably implement drawRect: instead of adding labels and images. One will probably take as long to implement as the other, but it will perform much better.
The UIWebView might be worth a short, although you will have to make sure that everything looks right there, too. Instead of using one big web page, I suggest simply throwing in a web view into each table view cell.
Personally I prefer the first approach, measuring and layout of text is not too complicated, but then I've never been the ultimate HTML guru.
I agree with #Eiko on making custom UITableViewCells, especially using drawRect instead of adding labels, images, etc.
If you used a UIWebView how would you handle updating it? A complete reload each time new text is sent? That seems like it will be a cause of issues. Once you get a long conversation reloading the entire UIWebView's contents will cause some flickering which isn't acceptable in my opinion. Also using a UIWebView would require you to have 2 complete copies of each conversation in memory. 1 as your backend data and 1 as the HTML. Where using a UITableView you have your backend data, and only enough of that will be duplicated that can fill 1 screen at a time.