I've tried almost all the possible permutations... I'm trying to make something like this:
http://www.amateurinmotion.com/articles/2009/01/24/creating-uitabbarcontroller-based-app-using-interfacebuilder.html
It's fairly simple and I tried running the program and it works. Now I'm trying to customise my current app so that it uses IB to load the xib file. My view hierarchy is like this:
So what I did is I selected the view controller and then I go to the view controller attributes and set the nib name to be a nib file name. I also changed the view controller identity to load my custom class.
I fixed it... It turns out that I have an extra layer of UIView in my view controllers... All good now!
Related
I want to know when to use xib and when to use UIContainerView?
I didn't find any article related to this topic in the web. What are the differences and what are the usage of each of them?
Let's first talk definitions:
A XIB file is a graphical representation of a screen/view.
A UIContainerView is exactly what it says, it's a view that will contain child view controllers.
So based on that it is clear that they will not be used in the same way.
A XIB file is a base file you create in Xcode, link to a UIViewController and in which you can drag and drop elements to design your screens.
UIViewContainer is one of those draggable elements and is simply meant to be a reserved space in your xib (or storyboard if you use that instead) in which you can easily "embed" another UIViewController.
Do you sometimes add a child UIViewController to your main UIViewController? You'd do something like this in code:
Instantiate second controller
Add second controller's view as subview in main controller
Add second controller as child of main controller
Create constraints so that view shows exactly where intended
Well the UIContainerView is here to do exactly this, only now you don't have to do it in code, you can drag a UIContainerView in you XIB/Storyboard and link the second controller there directly!
You can use .xib design file for a standalone View (like custom datePickerView, CustomAlertView, customViews etc). Use can use this class where every you want.
But ContainerView, you can design with a UIViewController on storyboard and its automatically generate its own view for you.
This is embedded with a single ViewController.
I followed the "Storyboard tutorial" and made some Table View Controllers; now I want to change one of them to a regular View Controller.
Is there a way to do that without making a new one?
One option is to edit the storyboard file directly. Navigate to the Storyboard in Finder and open with any text editor. Find the view controller in question and change the node in the xml from tableViewController to viewController.
This saves the pain of having to recreate the view controller, which comes in handy when you have a lot of connections made. This also works the other way around. If you have a viewController that started out as a plain view controller but you want to turn it into a table view controller you can simply edit the file reversing the node.
You need to create a new view controller and drag a tableview into it. Remember to set the delegate and datasource of the tableview to the view controller.
I have had the same scenario where I needed to change the Tableviewcontroller to a view controller. I googled for a work around but ended up without an exact solution. What I did was added a subclass of view controller and dropped a UITableview and added some more controls that I wanted. Pretty inconvenient but worked the way eventually!
I have created Storyboard with several views calling each other, now I need to create the code
I notice that XCode didn't created .h and .m controller files for each View from storyboard.
Should I create them manually?
Should I keep only one controller? (or few depending of separation of concerns on MVC)
Is there a pattern for developing this?
thanks
The usual approach is one view controller pr. screen full of content. You can imagine having one view controller for a tableview, with any sort of content, and then another view controller that presents that content in a new screen full of content if a row is pressed.
Normally when you have subviews inside of your view controllers, you wire them up in interfacebuilder. Then for instance if you want to populate a view that has a uiimageview and a uiactivityindicatorview inside it, you can control their behavior and how their populated from the view controllers code. You could also if you want something very generic and you feel that one view will probably take up a lot of code in your view controller, create a uiview subclass for it, and then set the class in interface builder.
Did this help? Please let me know if you need more clarification.
It's entirely up to you whether you have a ViewController for each view. If you have many views I would recommend it. Even if you have 2 or 3 views you probably still should. Things can get really confusing when each view has a different task but all have similar IBOutlets.
TLDR; Personally, I would say it was good practice to have a ViewController for each view if each view has a separate task.
I want to use generally the old .xib files in my iPhone application. But when it comes to tableViewController storyboard is a lot more convenient in order to make custom cells etc. Is it possible to make a .xib based application and in the middle of it, to use a storyboard for a UITableViewController and its DetailedViewController only?
You can use a storyboard for any part of a program. Storyboards are not an all or nothing concept. You can have just one view controller in a storyboard, or a small network that just represents a subsection of your app.
To use just one view controller from a storyboard:
Add a new storyboard to your existing project.
Add a single view controller to the storyboard.
Assign an identifier to the view controller in the inspector.
Use the UIStoryboard class to load the storyboard resource
Use -[UIStoryboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:] to create a new instance of that view controller.
Install the view controller some place in your app by doing something like pushing it on to a navigation controller, or run it modally.
Both can work fine together (Storyboards and Nib files). In the TVC that is part of your storyboard, just instantiate the destination VC in code and use the usual initWithNibName method to load the nib file.
You can add a storyboard to any project, but the point of storyboards is to centralize your XIB files into one location rather than having 10 XIB files you can have 1 .storyboard file that contains 10 scenes representing your views. This shows your connections to other scenes, and you can manage all the seques and transitions of each scene. So is it possible, yes you could add a storyboard to your project, but I would recommend you design you entire application in a storyboard if you want to use them.
In a navigation based application, when I want to create and use other uiviews and uitableviews I need to create their controller and views. in an example I saw that I can simply create a new controller with .xib file, design it, and just call that xib file from my navigationcontroller.
In another example, some stuff was going on also in the mainwindow.xib and some new controllers and navigation items were added from the mainwindow.xib.
What is the difference between these methods? when and why I should need to open and edit the mainwindow.xib file to add a controller?
The mainwindow.xib is your UIWindow component which you can see as a representation of your iphone screen, it will always be there no matter what. In your examples when you are showing your view controller dirrctly that is because the controller is already a subview of your UIWindow which is the mainwindow.xib in the Interface Builder.
There really is no difference between the 2 methods, in the first one you are adding your controller as a subview progrmatically using:
[window addsubview:mynavcontroller]
And in the second one youbare doing it thru interface builder, you may use whichever method you feel more comfortable with.
You do not really need a controller to show a view, however they can be handy if you want to do any extra stuff such as rotating your view or loading certain data when the view is loading. That being said you could add your view as a subview of your window and it would still work.