Ok, I am definitely doing something wrong here...
I have create a BaseViewController that is the datasource and delegate of an matching NIB file containing a UITableView. This controller is responsible pretty much for getting data from a remote web service, creating the cells, and populating the UITableView.
So now I want to create a SearchViewController, so that I can get a UISearchBar that a user can enter a search query, post it on the web service, get the results and populate a UITableView.
However most of the code (in retrieving the data/populating the UITableView) exists in BaseViewController. So the first thing I thought of is to create the SearchViewController as an extension of BaseViewController with a different NIB file.
I've created the new NIB file called SearchView containing a UISearchBar and a UITableView and linked those two with the File Owners IBOutlets. (The UITableView IBOutlet is being inherited from BaseViewController)
So finally in my MainWindow.xib I've added a TabBarController and from the IB I've linked the UINavigationController to load the SearchViewController with View being loaded from SearchView. When I switch to the search tab, I am getting a SIG_ABORT with error:
-[UITableViewController loadView] loaded the "SearchView" nib but didn't get a UITableView
Could anyone point me in the right direction on how to proceed? I am sure most of you doing stuff with UITableView have reused code by extended a class. Is this the correct approach?
I'm not sure that I follow your description exactly, but what I think you should do is create your SearchViewController as a subclass of BaseViewController, like
#interface EventListViewController : UIViewController { ... }
Is that what you mean by "extending" BaseViewController?
And then you're using [[SearchViewController alloc] initWithNibName:#"SearchView" bundle:nil] to create your SearchViewController? I usually handle the initial view loading of my apps programmatically in the app delegate.
The error you get sounds like your IBOutlet connections are wrong somehow. Too bad you can't post a nib file here as easily as you can post code.
Related
I don't really know if what I'm doing is the right way to do it. Right now it seems to be working until it hits a certain point with a EXC_BAD_ACCESS message.
I'll describe what I'm doing as best and with the most relevant details I can tell:
I have a CalendarViewController that inherits UIViewController which is loading from a .xib file (CalendarViewController.xib). The class contains a UIView called contentView which I created and which I initialize with another nib file based on a class which is also inherited from UIViewController:
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
calendarView = [[CalendarView alloc] initWithNibName:#"CalendarView" bundle:nil];
[contentView addSubview:calendarView.view];
}
(calendarView is the class inheriting UIViewController and viewDidLoad is from CalendarViewController.
CalendarView.xib has a UITableViewController with it's respective UITableView. This Table View Controller is linked to a CalendarTableController to which I also generated a .xib file for it.
Everything is being created just right (apparently) but it is crashing somewhere very unexpected. CalendarTableController also implements a DateLoaderDelegate which loads information from an xml on an external url.
- (void)connectionDidFinishLoading:(NSURLConnection *)connection {
// When the data has all finished loading, we set a copy of the
// loaded data for us to access. This will allow us to not worry about
// whether a load is already in progress when accessing the data.
self.lastLoadedMatchXMLData = [self.matchXMLData copy];
// Make sure the _delegate object actually has the xmlDidFinishLoading
// method, and if it does, call it to notify the delegate that the
// data has finished loading.
if ([_delegate respondsToSelector:#selector(xmlDidFinishLoading)])
{
[_delegate xmlDidFinishLoading];
}
}
The application is getting to this point without any problem. _delegate is containing the correct object (a CalendarTableController which implements the DateLoaderDelegate). But when it arrives to the line:
if ([_delegate respondsToSelector:#selector(xmlDidFinishLoading)])
it crashes with the EXC_BAD_ACCESS, I don't really know the reason, if I look at the debugger, the crash is not occurring in any of my classes as any of them are appearing in the execution stack. URLConnectionClient seems to be generating it, but I don't really know why. The loading of the xml had worked earlier before I rearranged the ViewControllers to work as I have described now.
Any ideas?
It's weird. I fixed the problem but I had to dedicate the whole UIViewController to contain the UITableView. What I did was this:
Create an IBOutlet with the custom UITableViewController (CalendarTableViewController) in the custom UIViewController.
In the loaded .xib file I linked the IBOutlet to a created UITableViewController declared as a CalendarTableViewController.
This way I solved the problem of the UITableViewController being deallocated without reason. But now the image views I had placed in the intermediate UIViewController wouldn't appear. I had to set that UIViewController to contain solely the CalendarTableView and place the image views in the initial UIViewController. Weird, isn't it? I don't like much the hierarchy I created... but for now that will do =S
Check that you have defined properties for all of your subviews and that you are retaining everything that you need to be. Bad Access May mean that you're attempting to call respondsToSelector on an object that has been released.
Have you tried calling loadView before adding the nested controller's view to the parent's view?
Maybe viewDidLoad is not executing before you add the view and some variables were never initialized.
I have the following problem. I've created a ViewController pretty much like the above
#interface MyViewController : UIViewController {
IBOutlet UITableView *myTableView;
}
#property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UITableView *myTableView;
I've linked myTableView on the Interface Builder to the matching nib's UITableView. and I've subclassed MyViewController to create YourViewController as so:
#interface YourViewController : MyViewController {
}
And then I load from a TabBarController the YourViewController on a tab item. Although I can see that MyViewController is indeed invoked at the end, no table view is displayed on the emulator.
I've tried debugging the MyViewController and it appears the the IBOutlet is nil.
Why is that?
I have encountered major issues with inheritance and IBOutlets and IBAction. I advise you to avoid that, and create shared stuff in another way.
I was hit hard by bugs when getting memory warnings for instance. Outlets and actions didn't get reconnected properly when they were defined in base class vs derived class.
Probably MyViewController's nib file is not loaded at all. Are you using for YourViewController a specific nib file? and in which way are you creating YourViewController.
Can you also try to define an "awakeFromNib" method in YourViewController and then from it call [super awakeFromNib] ?
However to understand your issue you must clearly explain how you load objects and if and where you use Nibs?
If you add it dynamically using code then only it will work. Not using Nib.
the UITableView (ie. your myTableView) needs delegates for data source and and its control.
And your controller needs a link to the Table view in the xib.
declare table delegate protocols in the interface section of your controller.
using IB, link the TableView in your xib to owners file:delegates.
using IB, link the file owner myTableView to the tableView in the xib.
I hope it will help.
Assuming that you have your whole navigation stack in MainWindow.xib
Open MainWindow.xib
Select YourViewController (Or whatever your controller that is subclassing UITableViewController is called)
Select Attributes Inspector
Ensure that the 'NIB Name' property has your correct YourViewController (Or whatever the name) selected
I had this exact same issue, this solved it for me.
I am new to iPhone and objective c. I have spent hours and hours and hours reading documents and trying to understand how things work. I have RTFM or at least am in the process.
My main problem is that I want to understand how to specify where an event gets passed to and the only way I have been able to do it is by specifying delegates but I am certain there is an easier/quicker way in IB.
So, an example.
Lets say I have 20 different views and view controllers and one MyAppDelegate.
I want to be able to build all of these different Xib files in IB and add however many buttons and text fields and whatever and then specify that they all produce some event in the MyAppDelegate object. To do this I added a MyAppDelegate object in each view controller in IB's list view. Then I created an IBAction method in MyAppDelegate in XCode and went back to IB and linked all of the events to the MyAppDelegate object in each Xib file.
However when I tried running it it just crashed with a bad read exception.
My guess is that each Xib file is putting a MyAppDelegate object pointer that has nothing to do with the eventual MyAppDelegate adress that will actually be created at runtime.
So my question is...how can I do this?!!!
If you create an instance of MyAppDelegate in each nib file then, yes, you do end up with a lot of different instances of the class when all the nibs load. The app delegate is not identified by class or even protocol but rather by being the object pointed to by the application instance's delegate property. To find the true app delegate, you have have to ask the application object itself for its delegate
You should have all your view controllers descend from a parent view controller class that has an appDelegate property. Implement something like this:
#import "MyAppDelegateClass.h"
#interface ViewControllerBaseClass :UIViewController {
MyAppDelegateClass *appDelegate;
}
#property(nonatomic, retain) *appDelegate;
#end
#implementation ViewControllerBaseClass
#synthesize appDelegate;
-(MyAppDelegateClass *) appDelegate{
self.appDelegate=(MyAppDelegateClass *)[[UIApplication sharedInstance] delegate];
return appDelegate;
}
#end
When the view controller needs the app delegate it just calls self.appDelegate. If you want to access an attribute of the app delegate use self.appDelegate.attributeName.
The important thing is that you ask the application for its specific delegate instance at runtime. You can't do that from a nib file.
I'm not entirely clear what exactly you're trying to do, but it's probably a bad idea. There should only be one app delegate per application, and it should deal with behavior for the whole application. Typically, the app delegate initializes the root view controller(s) and displays them, but not much else (other than handling things like opening and saving data sources).
The view controllers (subclasses of UIViewController) should interact with the XIBs. Having the view-specific behavior in the view controllers makes the app much easier to manage and maintain. Typically, there should be 0 or 1 XIBs per view controller (more than that is complicated). You set up the interaction with the views using the Target/Action pattern with IBOutlets and IBActions (see here for a complete guide). It's generally a bad idea to make view controllers or XIBs dependent on the app delegate (since reducing dependencies again makes the code easier to manage).
In general you should be making a view controller for each of the views you are building, and link events to those view controllers - not the app delegate. In fact usually no event ever is wired to the app delegate from any nib file, even in the sample projects you'll note that view controllers are created and held onto by the app delegate, but it does not receive events.
I am new to the iPhone SDK and am trying to create 3 views and switch between them. Data will come from a server and I will basically be showing 1 view and caching the other two. So far I am just trying to create a view and display it at run-time. My code is listed below. It shows only a blank screen and I think I am missing a key concept. Any Help?
#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
#import "ImageViewController.h"
#interface Test5ViewController : UIViewController
{
IBOutlet UIView *rootView;
ImageViewController *curImage;
ImageViewController *nextImage;
ImageViewController *prevImage;
}
#property(nonatomic,retain) IBOutlet UIView *rootView;
#property(nonatomic,retain) ImageViewController *curImage;
#property(nonatomic,retain) ImageViewController *nextImage;
#property(nonatomic,retain) ImageViewController *prevImage;
#end
and
- (void)loadView
{
self.curImage = [[ImageViewController alloc]initWithNibName:#"ImageView" bundle:[NSBundle mainBundle]];
UIImage *pic = [UIImage imageNamed:#"baby-gorilla.jpg"];
[self.curImage assignImage:pic];
self.rootView = self.curImage.view;
}
and
#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
#interface ImageViewController : UIViewController
{
IBOutlet UIImageView *image;
}
-(void)assignImage:(UIImage *)screenShotToSet;
#property(nonatomic,retain) IBOutlet UIImageView *image;
#end
Welcome to the iPhone SDK!
In general, there are two ways to get any view displayed.
First, and most commonly, you use a NIB file created by the Interface Builder. This is usually the easiest way to get started and I would recommend it for what you're trying to do here. It's too lengthy to describe all the steps you need to do for what you have here, but basically start in xcode by creating a new file and selecting "user interfaces" and choose View XIB. This will create a basic NIB file (they're called NIBs rather than XIBs for historical reasons). The first step in interface builder is to change the class name of the "File's Owner" to your UIViewController subclass (Test5ViewController). You can then drop anything that IB will allow into the view window or even replace the pre-supplied view object with one of your own. And here's the trick: make sure the view outlet (supplied by the UIViewController superclass) is connected to a view. Once this is done, this view will be automatically loaded when your NIB is loaded. You can then just put your UIViewController subclass (Test5ViewController) in your MainWindow.xib NIB file to get it automatically loaded, and you're in business.
Now, the way you're doing it here is the second way. Some people like to code this way all the time and not user interface builder. And while it's definitely necessary sometimes and always more flexible, it makes you understand what is happening a bit better. There may be other things, but the main thing you're missing is that in your code above, you have nothing that is adding your view into the view hierarchy. You need to check first that you have an UIApplicationDelegate subclass and it needs to load your "root" UIViewController class. All initial project creation types in xcode do this (except Window-based application). It is code like:
[window addSubview:rootController.view];
Once this is done, if your view controller wasn't loaded by the NIB (described briefly above), your loadView method will be called, expecting you to build your own view hierarchy. Above, you created the view(s), but failed to put them in a hierarchy. You need something like:
[self.view addSubview:curImage.view];
No view will be rendered until added to the view hierarchy. Make sure to look up the UIView class in the documentation and understand the variety of ways to add and remove views to the view hierarchy.
A couple things I should warn you about:
* your code above is leaking. You need to review how objective-C properties work. There's lots on this site about it. More than I have time to write about here.
* don't create a rootView property in the case you have here. There already is one in the superclass (UIViewController). It's just 'view'. Use that for saving your root view.
I hope this helps you get started. It can be bewildering at first, but you'll soon get it going! I recommend building and rewriting and rebuilding a lot of sample code before you do your "real" application. The SDK has many great samples.
General Description:
To start with what works, I have a UITableView which has been placed onto an Xcode-generated view using Interface Builder. The view's File Owner is set to an Xcode-generated subclass of UIViewController. To this subclass I have added working implementations of numberOfSectionsInTableView: tableView:numberOfRowsInSection: and tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath: and the Table View's dataSource and delegate are connected to this class via the File Owner in Interface Builder.
The above configuration works with no problems. The issue occurs when I want to move this Table View's dataSource and delegate-implementations out to a separate class, most likely because there are other controls on the View besides the Table View and I'd like to move the Table View-related code out to its own class. To accomplish this, I try the following:
Create a new subclass of UITableViewController in Xcode
Move the known-good implementations of numberOfSectionsInTableView:, tableView:numberOfRowsInSection: and tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath: to the new subclass
Drag a UITableViewController to the top level of the existing XIB in InterfaceBuilder, delete the UIView/UITableView that are automatically created for this UITableViewController, then set the UITableViewController's class to match the new subclass
Remove the previously-working UITableView's existing dataSource and delegate connections and connect them to the new UITableViewController
When complete, I do not have a working UITableView. I end up with one of three outcomes which can seemingly happen at random:
When the UITableView loads, I get a runtime error indicating I am sending tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath: to an object which does not recognize it
When the UITableView loads, the project breaks into the debugger without error
There is no error, but the UITableView does not appear
With some debugging and having created a basic project just to reproduce this issue, I am usually seeing the 3rd option above (no error but no visible table view). I added some NSLog calls and found that although numberOfSectionsInTableView: and numberOfRowsInSection: are both getting called, cellForRowAtIndexPath: is not. I am convinced I'm missing something really simple and was hoping the answer may be obvious to someone with more experience than I have. If this doesn't turn out to be an easy answer I would be happy to update with some code or a sample project. Thanks for your time!
Complete steps to reproduce:
Create a new iPhone OS, View-Based Application in Xcode and call it TableTest
Open TableTestViewController.xib in Interface Builder and drag a UITableView onto the provided view surface.
Connect the UITableView's dataSource and delegate-outlets to File's Owner, which should already represent the TableTestViewController-class. Save your changes
Back in Xcode, add the following code to TableTestViewController.m:
- (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView {
NSLog(#"Returning num sections");
return 1;
}
- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section {
NSLog(#"Returning num rows");
return 1;
}
- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
NSLog(#"Trying to return cell");
static NSString *CellIdentifier = #"Cell";
UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
if (cell == nil) {
cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease];
}
cell.text = #"Hello";
NSLog(#"Returning cell");
return cell;
}
Build and Go, and you should see the word Hello appear in the UITableView
Now to attempt to move this UITableView's logic out to a separate class, first create a new file in Xcode, choosing UITableViewController subclass and calling the class TableTestTableViewController
Remove the above code snippet from TableTestViewController.m and place it into TableTestTableViewController.m, replacing the default implementation of these three methods with ours.
Back in Interface Builder within the same TableTestViewController.xib-file, drag a UITableViewController into the main IB window and delete the new UITableView object that automatically came with it
Set the class for this new UITableViewController to TableTestTableViewController
Remove the dataSource and delegate bindings from the existing, previously-working UITableView and reconnect the same two bindings to the new TableTestTableViewController we created.
Save changes, Build and Go, and if you're getting the results I'm getting, note the UITableView no longer functions properly
Solution:
With some more troubleshooting and some assistance from the iPhone Developer Forums, I've documented a solution! The main UIViewController subclass of the project needs an outlet pointing to the UITableViewController instance. To accomplish this, simply add the following to the primary view's header (TableTestViewController.h):
#import "TableTestTableViewController.h"
and
IBOutlet TableTestTableViewController *myTableViewController;
Then, in Interface Builder, connect the new outlet from File's Owner to TableTestTableViewController in the main IB window. No changes are necessary in the UI part of the XIB. Simply having this outlet in place, even though no user code directly uses it, resolves the problem completely. Thanks to those who've helped and credit goes to BaldEagle on the iPhone Developer Forums for finding the solution.
I followed your steps, recreated the project and ran into the same problem. Basically you are almost there. There are 2 things missing (once fixed it works):
You need to connect the tableView of the TableTestTableViewController to the UITableView you have on the screen. As I said before because it is not IBOutlet you can override the tableView property and make it and IBOutlet:
#interface TableTestTableViewController : UITableViewController {
UITableView *tableView;
}
#property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UITableView *tableView;
Next thing is to add a reference to the TableTestTableViewController and retain it in the TableTestViewController. Otherwise your TableTestTableViewController may be released (after loading the nib with nothing hanging on to it.) and that is why you are seeing the erratic results, crashes or nothing showing. To do that add:
#interface TableTestViewController : UIViewController {
TableTestTableViewController *tableViewController;
}
#property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet TableTestTableViewController *tableViewController;
and connect that in the Interface Builder to the TableTestTableViewController instance.
With the above this worked fine on my machine.
Also I think it would be good to state the motivation behind all this (instead of just using the UITableViewController with its own UITableView). In my case it was to use other views that just the UITableView on the same screenful of content. So I can add other UILabels or UIImages under UIView and show the UITableView under them or above them.
I just spent many hours pulling my hair out trying to figure out why a UITableView wouldn't show up when when I had it embedded in a separate nib instead of in the main nib. I finally found your discussion above and realized that it was because my UITableViewController wasn't being retained! Apparently the delegate and datasource properties of UITableView are not marked "retain" and so my nib was loading but the controller was getting tossed... And due to the wonders of objective-c I got no error messages at all from this... I still don't understand why it didn't crash. I know that I've seen "message sent to released xxx" before... why wasn't it giving me one of those?!?
I think most developers would assume that structure that they build in an interface builder would be held in some larger context (the Nib) and not subject to release. I guess I know why they do this.. so that the iPhone can drop and reload parts of the nib on low memory. But man, that was hard to figure out.
Can someone tell me where I should have read about that behavior in the docs?
Also - about hooking up the view. First, if you drag one in from the UI builder you'll see that they hook up the view property (which is an IBOutlet) to the table view. It's not necessary to expose the tableView, that seems to get set internally. In fact it doesn't even seem to be necessary to set the view unless you want viewDidLoad notification. I've just broken the view connection between my uitableview and uitableviewcontroller (only delegate and datasource set) and it's apparently working fine.
Yes for some reason (please chime in if anybody knows why...) tableView property of the UITableViewController is not exposed as an IBOutlet even though it is a public property. So when you use Interface Builder, you can't see that property to connect to your other UITableView. So in your subclass, you can create a tableView property marked as an IBOutlet and connect that.
This all seems hacky and a workaround to me, but it seems to be the only way to separate a UITableViewController's UITableView and put it somewhere else in UI hierarchy. I ran into the same issue when I tried to design view where there are things other than the UITableView and that was the way I solved it... Is this the right approach???
I was able to make this work. I built a really nice dashboard with 4 TableViews and a webview with video. The key is having the separate tableView controllers and the IBOutlets to the other tableview controllers defined in the view controller. In UIB you just need to connect the other tableview controllers to the file owner of the view controller. Then connect the tables to the corresponding view controllers for the datasource and delegate.