I want to add a shadow (using the layer property of the view) to my view controller's view. Should I do this in load view after creating the view myself.
Or should I do this in ViewDidLoad.
EDIT: Currently I haven't implemented loadView.
The short answer is, if you're using loadView, it doesn't really matter whether you configure the shadow there or in viewDidLoad. viewDidLoad will be called right after loadView, in every case.
The longer version is that if in the future you decided to move your view creation into a XIB file, you would want to remove your implementation of loadView. In that case, you would need to customize the layer shadow in viewDidLoad. So theoretically you could save your future self some copy and paste work by putting it in viewDidLoad.
the loadView method is intended for view controller's view creation. So if you want to add shadow to it, then this would be the best place. And if you want to customize it's subviews, then it's better to do that in viewDidLoad
Related
In UIViewControllers I have several methods such as viewDidLoad, viewWillAppear, viewDidAppear, etc.
The question is: "what is the best place to, for example, set the background color of my view, instantiate, and set the background color of a UILabel, or instantiate an object that I set as #property in my class and things like that? "
Thanks!
So many questions at once!
The first time the view is loaded, in viewDidLoad you will already have access to all the readily initialized UI elements, so it is a great place to configure the view and to set your class properties.
If you come back to the view if it is already loaded (say, by popping a view from a navigation controller, or dismissing a modal view controller), viewDidLoad will not be called. Thus, if you want to change something (background, add a label, change the background of a label, etc.) based on something that might have happened since the view controller was initialized, you have to use viewWillAppear.
You would use viewDidAppear if you want to animate a change so the user can see it after the view has already become visible.
Edit: this is pertinent for if you use IB or storyboard. See CitronEvanescent's answer for the case that you create your view in code.
The feasible method would be viewDidLoad or -(id)init,-(id)initWithNibName constructors of the class.
viewWillAppear and viewDidAppear should be avoided,since you would not like to instantiate your variables again and again since they get called every time the view appears(from pop or tabSwitch).These two methods can be useful in case you want to change some variable values on reappearance
If you are creating your view programaticaly, you can set your properties on - (void) loadView this method will be call once before anything is displayed.
Generally i prefer instantiating the UI elements in the -(id) init and update their UI in loadView.
For further details : View construction reference
Is it possible to reload the main view of a view controller from its XIB file in its viewWillAppear method? The method make significant changes to the view, which would be difficult to reverse. When the view controller gets pushed off the navigation stack, the method has to deal with a changed view. It would be much easier if I could just relax the view from the XIB. It seems that the Apple implementation assumes that the view will remain static, and can therefore be reused.
You can update large portions of your view in the -viewWillAppear. There is no stipulation what you can or can't update there.
Just make sure you account for everything, when you do. I have used -viewWillAppear to refresh my view with information, so you can use that to load an initialize what you need rather than -viewDidLoad.
I need to create a class that will present a UIVIew and has a some code to initialize it before it is ready to show. I need to know when the view is ready, I mean, I need something like viewDidLoad or viewWillAppear, but as it is a UIVIew it lacks these protocols.
I cannot implement it as a UIViewController as I don't want to present it modal. It is really a rectangular view that needs to show on a screen side.
How do I declare this class? If the class is a UIView based I don't have the methods I mentioned.
thanks
Any reason to not do that kind of stuff inside the initWithFrame method on a UIView? Also, you can do additional stuff on layoutSubviews. A view controller has viewDidLoad because the view is lazy loaded (from a nib or otherwise - it also has a loadView). It has viewWillAppear and viewWillDisappear because it is managing the view (btw, even the view controller is managed by another view controller - these methods are called when you have the controller within a UINavigationController or UITabBarController or such classes which mange UIViewControllers. - the view itself is not really managing anything. All it knows about is how to draw itself. For that, you have layoutSubViews, drawRect, etc.
Doing some heavy stuff upon view's load will definitely kill the UI performance. You probably need to implement another kind of design pattern that will asynchrounously assign data values to the instance of your custom view - when that is done, you call layoutSubviews or setNeedsDisplay to update the view.
The scenario you described is no reason for not implementing a UIViewController. Assume you have a container view A and a subview B. Both have their own UIViewController AC and BC. Now on AC you add the View B managed by BC:
[self.view addSubview:BC.view];
You probably want to be using UIViewController.
You don't just have to present them modally. You can get your view controller's view with yourViewController.view, and add that as a subview of whatever view you want.
If you're targeting iOS 5, there are a few new methods (such as addChildViewController:) designed to make doing things like this easier. You can do it on iOS 4 too though, and it'll still work.
Implement a drawRect in youR UIView, plus an initialization flag. Just before the view is to be displayed the drawRect will be called. If the initialization flag isn't yet set, do your initialization and set the flag. This will only look good if your initialization can be done quickly (no long synchronous calls).
I need to create a class that will present a UIVIew and has a some code to initialize it before it is ready to show. I need to know when the view is ready, I mean, I need something like viewDidLoad or viewWillAppear, but as it is a UIVIew it lacks these protocols.
You might want to rethink how your view is being used. It sounds like you're trying to put too much controller-like logic into your view. That's why you're wanting your view to behave like a controller.
More specifically: What exactly are you trying to accomplish? If you're waiting for data to load before display the view, that might actually be something to put in the controller that is calling the view.
To illustrate my point, imagine you're putting some text in a UILabel that you read from disk. The reading from disk isn't really related to the view. The view only cares what text it displays, not how it received the text. Once it's read from disk, you can create a UILabel with that text that you read. This allows the UILabel to be more flexible.
That example might not be at all related to what you're doing, but I use it as an example of the difference between a view and a controller. Anything not related with the display and drawing of the view shouldn't belong there.
I have a situation where i have to reload all subViews of my current view....I am adding all objects(like buttons, images ...etc) from interface builder.....
And i want to reset these subviews when user click on a button...
i tried [self.view setNeedsDisplay]; but it doesn't works.
Is there any simple way to do this...
Any suggestion?
I am not sure that what happening in your code but i guess
You should add all subview programatically and refresh on button click event,
or write code in viewDidAppear method.
Reloading them sounds like the wrong thing to do. You can easily reset them to their default state programmatically by setting the various properties to your defaults. Once you do that I would probably just create the whole view and subviews programmatically without using IB. I do everything programmatically now and find it easier to maintain my code.
You could come up with a NIB based solution by putting all affected subviews within a parent UIView and load just that parent view from a NIB and then replace the parent UIView only but I don't recommend it. You need to able to set subview properties programmatically in viewDidLoad anyway in case the view controller needs to unload/reload the view based on memory warnings.
May be this is helpful to you.
One way is create on UI method that set default or required value for required controllers. And call it on button event.
I'm trying to figure out from Apple's sketchy documentation which method is the best place to be initializing and adding my Views controls to the controller's view.
With winforms it's fairly straightforward, as they're always initialized inside InitializeDesigner, called in the constructor. I'm trying to match the reliability of this pattern if possible.
I'm working with UIViewControllers and UITableViewControllers inside a UINavigationController most of the time - if this effects it all.
Here's an example:
public MyController()
{
// Here?
AddViews();
}
public override ViewDidLoad()
{
base.ViewDidLoad();
// Or is should it be here?
AddViews();
}
public override ViewWillAppear(bool )
{
base.ViewWillAppear(animated);
// Here?
AddViews();
}
public override ViewDidAppear(bool animated)
{
base.ViewDidLoad(animated);
// Or maybe here?
AddViews();
}
void AddViews()
{
UILabel label = new UILabel();
label.Text = "Test";
label.Frame = new RectangleF(100,100,100,26);
View.AddSubView(label);
UIWebView webview = new UIWebView();
webview .Frame = new RectangleF(100,100,100,26);
View.AddSubView(webview);
}
I get mixed results with some UIControls when I add them to the view in different places. Visual lag sometimes, othertimes the webview is hidden somewhere.
Is there a general rule to keep to for adding them?
In general, this is what I do:
ViewDidLoad - Whenever I'm adding controls to a view that should appear together with the view, right away, I put it in the ViewDidLoad method. Basically this method is called whenever the view was loaded into memory. So for example, if my view is a form with 3 labels, I would add the labels here; the view will never exist without those forms.
ViewWillAppear: I use ViewWillAppear usually just to update the data on the form. So, for the example above, I would use this to actually load the data from my domain into the form. Creation of UIViews is fairly expensive, and you should avoid as much as possible doing that on the ViewWillAppear method, becuase when this gets called, it means that the iPhone is already ready to show the UIView to the user, and anything heavy you do here will impact performance in a very visible manner (like animations being delayed, etc).
ViewDidAppear: Finally, I use the ViewDidAppear to start off new threads to things that would take a long time to execute, like for example doing a webservice call to get extra data for the form above.The good thing is that because the view already exists and is being displayed to the user, you can show a nice "Waiting" message to the user while you get the data.
There are other tricks you can use, though. Lets say you want a UILabel to "fly" into the form after the form is loaded. In that case, I would add the label to the form in the ViewDidLoad but with a Frame outside of the view area, and then in the ViewDidAppear I would do the animation to fly it back into view.
Hope it helps.
Hmm, Apple's docs seem to be pretty clear, IMHO.
If you create your own root view (the root view of this particular controller's view hierarchy) programmatically, you should create it in -loadView without calling super and set the view property when done. If your view is loaded from a nib, you should not touch -loadView.
You add custom subviews to the view controller's view or otherwise modify it in -viewDidLoad. The recommended practice is to create your UILabel and UIWebView in -viewDidLoad and release them in -viewDidUnload, setting their references to nil if you need to keep them in ivars.
Note: -viewDidUnload is deprecated in iOS 6 and is just not called any more, because UIViewController no longer purges its view under memory pressure.
viewDidLoad relates to 'MEMORY', and viewWillAppear/viewDidAppear relates to 'APPEARANCE'. A view controller's view (which is a root-view of your view controller's views) can appear/disappear numerous times, even if the controller's view is already in memory.
(When referring to root-view, I also means its subviews, because the root-view has reference to its children (subviews), but from a view controller's perspective, it usually knows just the root-view. Reference to subviews can happens normally through view controller's outlets.)
The root-view itself MAY be removed from memory when there's a memory warning. The view controller will determine when is the best time to removed them from memory.
So, you would normally add subviews in viewDidLoad, because adding subviews means adding them to memory. BUT not if you create all of your views programmatically (not from a nib files). If that's the case then you should override loadView method, and create a root-view and add subviews there, so in this case you can omit viewDidLoad to add subviews.