I have looked at several sources but I am still very confused! I want to make an application with several views (just standard views, no table views or anything), from which I can click buttons on each view to access the others.
I've seen several ways to do this, but the only one that made any sense to me is to have the application delegate be responsible for swapping views. And I'm not even sure my code correctly cleans up the memory of the view it's swapping!
Is there a cleaner, or easier way to switch between views (I don't care about animations) than using a delegate?
I've also seen presentModalViewController, but that seems sort of unorganized. (E.g. If you have more than one view presenting a modal, how can you easily tell the newest view to close all views up to the root).
There's also creating a window-based application and using the window to addSubView, and removeFromSuperview, but how would you swap one very for another without creating extra, cumbersome coding in the delegate method to detect what view what removed, and which new view should be added? I can't find an addViewToSuperview method, at least.
So please share how you guys swap views, and perhaps the benefit to your system.
Talk really slow, because I feel very slow when it comes to swapping views!
Thank you for your time!
Dealing with multiple views is pretty easy if you understand the concept behind the views. For example your Delegate could be linked to an empty parent View. Then you just create your children views and add them to the parent view with addSubview. The last added view is the one that will be displayed in the foreground.
Now you can bring the views into the front using bringSubviewToFront method. Keep in mind that all your views are kept in memory until you remove them from the parent view using the children view's removeFromSuperview method.
Swapping views is just removing the child view before you add the next one but then you have to decide if you want to retain them or if you want to release them but then you need to *re-create (alloc / init) the views later.
BTW If you views are not at the right place then you either need to adjust the positions relative to the parent view or set them right in the interface builder because iOS will not reposition them because you add them as sub view.
For example I used that code to switch between a view that displays an Ad or a ticker:
- (void) showAds:(BOOL)flag {
if( showAds != flag ) {
while([[self.bottomView subviews] count] > 0 ) {
[[[self.bottomView subviews] objectAtIndex:0] removeFromSuperview];
}
showAds = flag;
if( showAds ) {
[self.tickerViewController stop];
[self.bottomView addSubview:self.adViewController.view];
} else {
[self.bottomView addSubview:self.tickerViewController.view];
[self.tickerViewController start];
}
}}
The 2nd line makes sure I don't remove and add if nothing has changed. The next 3 lines remove any residual sub views. After that either add the Add or the Ticker view as my current sub view (including making sure the ticker is started / stopped properly).
Hope that helps.
Related
Is there a BOOL or some other way of knowing if viewDidLoad: has been called?
I need to change a view property every time my view has entered active, but if the view hasn't ever been loaded, I don't want to prematurely trigger viewDidLoad:. If there isn't way of easily telling if viewDidLoad: has been called, I'll simply add a BOOL called loaded set to NO in the view controller init, then change the view properties after entered active if loaded is YES or in viewWillAppear: if loaded is NO then set loaded to YES.
Use isViewLoaded. Other than that it does exactly what you want, there's not that much to say about it. The documentation is as simple as:
Calling this method reports whether the view is loaded. Unlike the
view property, it does not attempt to load the view if it is not
already in memory.
Perhaps you should init your UIView in viewDidLoad, and then change it in whichever way you need to inside viewWillLayoutSubviews.
Here's the pedantic answer to this question. If you want to know when viewDidLoad has been triggered, you have to implement viewDidLoad in your view controller
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
viewDidLoadCalled = YES; // Not actually the best way to do this...
// Set up more view properties
}
But as Tommy says, you actually need to use isViewLoaded. This gets around the problem of doing a check like
if (!self.view) {
// do something
}
which inadvertently loads the view by virtue of asking about it.
Be aware that by the time viewWillAppear: is called, the view will always have loaded. Also, on older (pre-iOS 6 I think) releases, the view can unload and be reloaded many times over a view controller's lifetime. Refer to the very nice Big Nerd Ranch view lifecycle diagram for the old behavior. It's almost the same in iOS 6+, except that the view doesn't unload under low memory conditions and viewDidUnload doesn't get called:
I have UIView, that can contain one of two views. When I removeFromSuperview first view and addSubview second view I can still hear accessibiliyLabel of hidden view. And only in 1-2 seconds I can hear correct accessibiilityLabel.
I see that it is common situation when hidden state of view is changed, accessibility can be frustrated and still speak hidden views, and does not note visible views.
Also if in UITableViewCell UIButton is hidden and then hidden state changes to NO, VoiceOver ignores it like it is still hidden. Only manual implementation of UIAccessibilityContainer protocol for cell resolves mentioned problem
No Notifications can solve this issue. Even playing with accessibilityElementsHidden did not help. Struggling with this during several days
Please can you recommend is there any way to say Accessibility that hierarhy of views was changed
You can post a UIAccessibilityScreenChangedNotification or UIAccessibilityLayoutChanged to alert UIAccessibility that the view changed. Since you didn't post any code, I can only give you a generic example, e.g.:
UIAccessibilityPostnotification(UIAccessibilityLayoutChanged,accessibilityelement)
...where "accessibilityelement" would be a button or text field or other accessibility element that VoiceOver switches to next.
Reference: UIKIt Reference
Just ran into this myself with a third party side menu library and had to use accessibilityElementsHidden to fix it. I first tried leveraging the accessibilityViewIsModal property, but that only works on sibling views.
#pragma mark - IIViewDeckControllerDelegate
- (void)viewDeckController:(IIViewDeckController *)viewDeckController didOpenViewSide:(IIViewDeckSide)viewDeckSide animated:(BOOL)animated
{
if (viewDeckSide == IIViewDeckLeftSide) {
[self.topViewController.view endEditing:YES];
self.viewDeckController.leftController.view.accessibilityElementsHidden = NO;
}
}
- (void)viewDeckController:(IIViewDeckController *)viewDeckController didCloseViewSide:(IIViewDeckSide)viewDeckSide animated:(BOOL)animated
{
self.viewDeckController.leftController.view.accessibilityElementsHidden = YES;
}
I've got a view controller whose view contains a UIImageView that does animation:
//AnimationViewController::ViewDidLoad event:
var ctlAnimations = new UIImageView();
ctlAnimations.AnimationImages = list.ToArray(); //<--list contains the UIImages
ctlAnimations.AnimationDuration = 1.0 * list.Count;
ctlAnimations.StartAnimating();
this.Add(ctlAnimations);
This works perfectly: when I push AnimationViewController onto the navigation stack, it displays and animates the UIImage.
But now I need to show AnimationViewController with a custom animated transition:
var transition = CATransition.CreateAnimation ();
transition.Duration = 0.3f;
transition.TimingFunction = CAMediaTimingFunction.FromName(CAMediaTimingFunction.EaseInEaseOut);
transition.Type = CATransition.TransitionFade;
this.View.Layer.AddAnimation (transition, "fade");
//viewController is being pushed with animated=false, because we have a custom animation
base.PushViewController (viewController, false);
this.View.Layer.RemoveAnimation("fade");
This also works perfectly, in that the new View transitions into place using the specified custom animation.
But when I push AnimationViewController onto the stack using an animated transition, it displays but the animation doesn't run. Instead, it shows the first frame of the animation (the first image in the list), and doesn't run it.
So, something about the transition is breaking the ability to animate a UIImage in the new view controller, but I simply can't figure out what to do about it.
Update: I've noticed that if I tap the NavigationController's back button, but then move off of the back button and let go (so I don't actually go back), the animation starts playing!
PushViewController works like this: Over the current view controller the next view controller is placed you can say pushed onto the stack. From Apple docs its clear that either you need to push view controllers either with animation or without.
Work around:
Set the frame of the next view controller's view's x position beyond
the screen's right
Suppose width of the screen is 320, then set the x position of next
view as 320.
Add the next view as subview to the existing one.
Now do your custom animation.
Another work around:(a bit more overhead though)
Take a snapshot programmatically of current view.
Add the snapshot image as the initial view of next view controller.
Now push view controller without animation. (User will still see the old view)
In viewDidAppear of new view controller start your custom animation.
[I have to warn you that this method of taking snapshot might give you a small delay in older devices. Newer devices are pretty fast enough you wont see any lag]
Let me know if any issues in case you are implementing any of these solutions.
Try putting the animating bit in ViewDidAppear rather than ViewDidLoad. Also, try using breakpoints and NSLogs to follow what happens after the animation, starting with the ViewDidLoad and ViewDidAppear. Try having the animation repeat forever so you can see if it has ever been animating or not.
I'm very curious what the culprit is here as well. Why is the animation not displaying correctly in some cases?
My theory is that you have placed animation code in viewWillAppear rather than viewDidAppear. Animation code does not run properly when placed in WILL or SHOULD methods.
Can you please post back what caused the issue?
Suspicion #1
I am betting that your code is not being called because it is in ViewDidLoad. I believe you are creating a customized view stack, that means you need to be using the ChildViewController methods from Cocoa.
I am unfamiliar with MonoTouch (I only write pure CocoaTouch), so this might not be 100% correct
I would be consoling out your viewDidLoad and viewDidAppear methods and absolutely make sure they are being called. It is my suspicion that viewDidLoad IS NOT. And this is causing viewDidLoad to not be called on the UIImageView.
In your code you probably need the equivalent of (from objective-c):
[self addChildViewController:viewController];
// OR?
[base addChildViewController:viewController];
This tells the 'parent' viewController that the Child has been made visible, so call the viewDidLoad/Appear and Unload/Disappear methods when appropriate. This might not exist in MonoTouch, or the Push methods might not be fully implemented, so you might need to do some hacky (bad) stuff like manually calling the viewDidLoad method manually.
Suspicion #2
It could also be that your 'list' variable (the one holding the images) is nil. If that happened the animation would not run. OR maybe it has something to do with the duration of your animation, try to set it to whatever would make it repeat forever. Be sure it isn't running REAL FAST somehow and you are just missing it.
begin philosophical musing
Either that or start learning actual Cocoa development :) Not meant as a flame, but definitely meant seriously, you are going to run into problems trying to develop applications through translation layers (custom language-bridges meant to get around writing the base language of a framework/application/platform).
Titanium/MonoTouch/PhoneGap will never produce as robust or high-quality applications as real Objective-C. And besides that, once you learn Cocoa it will change how you write everything else, and I doubt you will want to go back. As the wonderful website of the same name says, 'Cocoa is my girlfriend'
Let me tell the something about UI in IOS. In IOS access to the UI Elements is limited to a single thread.
The single thread would always be the mainThread except in the case when you are running an animation.
Hence when u are performing number of animation at the same instance you have to use
beginAnimation.
setFrame (or) some methods that changes state of UI element.
Repeat step2 for all those objects u are scheduling to animate.
comitAnimations to perform all animations at once. (using comit animations ensure all the animations are performed on same thread)
So, I guess here is what happening in ur case.
Viewcontroller started an animation to push the view controller into stack.
Image view started another animation before finishing first animation.
Look at the links to get a clear idea link1 and link2.
Well Let's get into the solution
Add an ivar and retained property named ctlAnimations to your class
In ViewDidLoad (or) ViewDidAppear
self.ctlAnimations = new UIImageView();
ctlAnimations.image=(UIImage*)[list.toArray() objectAtIndex:0];
this.Add(ctlAnimations);
[self performSelector:#selector(startAnimatingImage) afterDelay:0.1];
Create a private method named startAnimatingImage with below code
self.ctlAnimations.AnimationImages = list.ToArray();
ctlAnimations.AnimationDuration = 1.0 * list.Count;
ctlAnimations.StartAnimating();
On a brief we just shown first image for a moment when the firstanimation is taken place and then we delayed animation start for 1 second so that it performs after first animation and then starts animating the image.
Go ahead and give it a try
There is the concept for the Main thread. So UIAnimation are actually works on Main Thread and at the same time may be this was happen that another task is performing on the same Main Thread.So that was a case like IOS will give preference according to processes id of each process at a time and for the solution you need to make background thread for the same operations.
Well, I never figured out what the problem was here, but it also turned out that there was some sort of memory leak in UIImage such that on some phones my code was crashing.
So I rewrote it to do the animation manually. Now I set a timer and keep a frame index variable, and every time the timer rings I change the image myself. This amounts to the same thing, and it turns out it fixes this problem.
Ok I am trying to refresh the tab content of each of my tabs after a web call has been made, and I have tried soo many different methods to do this that I have lost count. Could someone please tell me how this is possible?
The web call just calls JSON from a server and uses it to update the content of the tabs. For testing purposes I have a button set up inside my settings class. Settings class is a view within the home tab which has a button called refresh. When clicked this takes JSON stored on the device which is different to the one called from the web call on application start up. This saves me having to change the JSON on the server.
I will take you through some of the techniques I have tried and would be grateful if someone could tell me what I am doing wrong.
I tried making an instance of the class and calling the refresh method like this
DashboardVC *db = [[DashboardVC alloc] init];
[db refreshMe];
The refresh method in dashboard class is this
-(void) refreshMe
{
[self loadView];
[self viewDidLoad];
}
However no luck. This method will work if I call it inside the Dashboard class, but wont work if I call it from another class. I think it is become I am instantiating a new class and calling refresh on that. So I dropped that technique and moved onto the next method
This loops through all the tabBars and changes the tabTitles without any issues, so it I know it is definitely looping through the ViewControllers properly.
I also tried every varient of the view methods like ViewDidAppear, viewWillAppear etc, no luck.
I also tried accessing the refreshMe method I made in the dashBoard class through the tabController like this
[[[self.tabBarController viewControllers] objectAtIndex:0] refreshMe];
But again no luck, this just causes my application to crash.
I read through this guide
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/WindowsViews/Conceptual/ViewControllerPGforiOSLegacy/TabBarControllers/TabBarControllers.html
on the apple website but it doesn't seem to cover how to refresh individual tab content.
All I want is to have each individual tab refresh its content after the web call is made, and have spent ages trying to figure this out, but nothing is working.
So would be very grateful if someone could show me what I am doing wrong?
Thanx in advance....
EDIT:
Expand on what I have tried
After discussion with Michael I realised you should never call loadView as against Apple guidelines. So I removed any references to LoadView. I have now placed a method in all the main ViewControllers called RefreshMe which sets up the views, images texts etc in the class. And this method is placed inside the ViewDidLoad. Now I want to be able to call these methods after a web call has taken place, so effectively refreshing the application.
My viewDidLoad now looks like this in all my the main classes.
- (void) viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
[self refreshMe];
}
And then the refreshMe method contains the code which sets up the screen.
The JSON data pulled from the web call will set up the content of each of the 5 tabs, so need them all to be refreshed after web call.
I tried looping through the viewControllers and calling viewDidLoad, which should in turn call the refreshMe method which sets up the class, however nothing happens. Code I used was this
NSArray * tabBarViewControllers = [self.tabBarController viewControllers];
for(UIViewController * viewController in tabBarViewControllers)
{
[viewController viewDidLoad];
}
For the time being I have also included
NSLog(#"Method called");
in the viewDidLoad of each class to test if it is being called. However the message is only being printed out when I first load the application or if I re-enter the application. This method should be called after I click the refresh button in the settings screen but it isn't and I have no idea why.
Anyone have any idea why this is not working?
From the question and your comments, it sounds like there are at least two problems:
You're having trouble accessing the view controllers managed by your app's tab bar controller.
You seem to be working against the normal operation of your view controllers.
The first part should be straightforward to sort out. If you have a pointer to an object, you can send messages to that object. If the corresponding method doesn't execute, then either the pointer doesn't point where you think it does or the object doesn't have the method that you think it does. Let's look at your code:
NSArray * tabBarViewControllers = [self.tabBarController viewControllers];
for(UIViewController * viewController in tabBarViewControllers)
{
[viewController viewDidLoad];
}
This code is supposed to call -viewDidLoad on each of the view controllers managed by some tab bar controller. Leaving aside the wisdom of doing that for a moment, we can say that this code should work as expected if self.tabBarController points to the object that you think it does. You don't say where this code exists in your app -- is it part of your app delegate, part of one of the view controllers managed by the tab bar controller in question, or somewhere else? Use the debugger to step through the code. After the first line, does tabBarViewControllers contain an array of view controllers? Is the number of view controllers correct, and are they of the expected types? If the -viewDidLoad methods for your view controllers aren't being called, it's a good bet that the answer is "no," so figure out why self.tabBarController isn't what you think.
Now, it's definitely worth pointing out (as Michael did) that you shouldn't be calling -viewDidLoad in the first place. The view controller will send that method to itself after it has created its view (either loaded it from a .xib/storyboard file or created it programmatically). If you call -viewDidLoad yourself, it'll either run before the view has been created or it'll run a second time, and neither of those is helpful.
Also, it doesn't make much sense to try to "refresh" each view controller's view preemptively. If your app is retrieving some data from a web service (or anywhere else), it should use the resulting data to update its model, i.e. the data objects that the app manages. When a view controller is selected, the tab bar controller will present its view and the view controller's -viewWillAppear method will be called just before the view is displayed. Use that method to grab the data you need from the model and update the view. Doing it this way, you know that:
the view controller's view will have already been created
the data displayed in the view will be up to date, even if one of the other view controllers modified the data
you'll never spend time updating views that the user may never look at
Similarly, if the user can make any changes to the displayed data, you should ensure that you update the model either when the changes are made or else in your view controller's -viewWillDisappear method so that the next view controller will have correct data to work with.
Instead of refreshing your view controllers when updating your tab bar ordering, why not simply refresh your views right before they will appear by implementing your subclassed UIViewController's viewWillAppear: method?
What this means is that each time your view is about to appear, you can update the view for new & updated content.
I am trying to understand the behavior of view controllers when switching from one to another (displaying different views)
A part form the addSubiew statements which seem to work, I can't find an explanation to what happens with the two statements:
self.view = someViewController.view;
[someViewController loadView];
In fact I got a case where only the first one seems to work (the view defined within someViewController is displayed) and in another case only the second one.
More precisely, from the root viewController.view to anotherViewController.view (already istantiated) I have to use the first one, to come back I need to use the second one.
I can't understand what can it be the difference in the current situation which allows one or the other statement to work.
Thank you
It's very hard to even understand your question. But I'm gonna try to answer it:
The iPhone OS uses a stack of views and display the first one to the users.
You either pop (remove) or push (add) views to this stack.
The code you provided is somewhat "obscure". The best pratice to gain control is to add SubViews to your window or any other view
i.e. [window addSubview:viewController.view];
Don't override your current view by using self.view = someViewController.view;
Instead initialize your new ViewController and add it's view to the subview of your current view.
Any questions? Just comment.
Looks like you have some misconceptions about how view controllers work.
There are a couple things wrong with those 2 statements:
self.view = someViewController.view;
According to the docs of UIViewController.view :
"Each view controller object is the sole owner of its view. You must not associate the same view object with multiple view controller objects." -Apple Docs
Once that line of code executes, the view would have 2 different controllers, which is bad.
Next line:
[someViewController loadView];
This is bad because you should never explicitly call loadView.
From the docs of UIViewController.loadView :
"You should never call this method directly."
From the docs of UIViewController.view :
"If you access this property and its value is currently nil, the view controller automatically calls the loadView method and returns the resulting view. "
Spend some time with the viewController tutorials and guides such as "View Controller Programming Guide for iPhone OS". They are good docs and can teach a lot.