I'm trying to get a view that is similar to the the application detail view presented in the app store but I can't figure out how it is implemented. It looks like a UITableView with 3 or 4 custom cells. Does that sound right? Any insight would be great.
Thanks.
Nah it's not like that at all. What it is, is a couple of scrollviews (ie., the screenshots is just a scroll view tied to a paging control), directly above that is either a web view or a scroll view (hard to tell) -- with the actual content. Above the content you'll have a few items in the content view that holds everything, the app icon, name, company, etc. And at the very buttom, you can implement it as a table view if you want, but yes, you'll need custom cells, which isn't difficult to do, you just have to implement the tableView:heightForRowAtIndexPath: delegate, and return the appropriate height for each cell in that view, then in your tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath: switch on the indexPath's row property, and if it's one type of cell, set it up how you need to, if it's another, do that custom cell, etc.
It's not really hard at all. I reproduce a view similar to this in one app that I work on in the store, and I do it pretty much just as I described above.
Related
I am making an app and would like to direct my user once they log in into their dashboard, I have seen some apps display things in what seem like a table view controller or a view controller with a table view. I would like to display the logo up top and then a table displaying their username then about 4 more rows displaying other info then at the bottom a tab bar. What would be the best way to go about this?
any advice welcomed. If relevant I am using swift, Xcode7 and parse to handle my users
Use a UITableView. This a bit more customizable in terms of Storyboard layout. You can place UIImageViews, toolbars, and other elements all over your UIViewController. You can then put a UITableView in the exact place that would work for you, with the dimensions you need.
Of course, you could always use a UITableViewController. You could embed this controller in a variety of combinations, which would let you add tab bars or navigation bars.
The only real difference in implementation is that you have to remember to explicitly write the delegate and data source methods when using a UITableView.
For your case, I would pick whatever seems easiest to implement in your case. Probably a UITableView in my opinion.
Some differences between UITableViewController (TV) and UIViewController with TableView (VT) I know:
You can add other controls into VT and pin it to anywhere you want. TV can't do that.
You can add many same group of controls without add constraints with TV. VT you have to add constraints.
You don't want to worry about scrolling in TV with many group of controls.
With TV you can create static table cell but you can't with VT. Static table works on TableViewController only.
In your situation, I use UITableViewController with static table to achieve that.
Hope this can help.
I'm working on my first app and I've issues on how to layout some of its logics.
Basically, what the app is supposed to do is to show a first screen when launched where user can fill in some values and press a button that opens a tableview which shows results. The first screen (view), outlets and connections are all working fine. The issue I'm having is how to leave this "home" search view and show the results to the end user on a table view. Right now, I've only 1 view with its related View Controler and this controller handles the tasks of taking user inputs and get results throughout a HTTP post request.
I need your guidance...Thx in advance
Stephane
Is there a reason that this all has to happen on one screen? iOS is set up to allow for this to happen very easily and (I think) attractively by using a UINavigationController and pushing in a new view controller (could be a UITableViewController or simply a UIViewController that contains a UITableView).
If you MUST have all of this take place in one view, Swastik is correct that it will require some view acrobatics. One way to do it attractively is to use the UIView animations introduced with iOS 4.
Here's Apple's UIView documentation: UIView Class Reference
Specifically, check out the CLASS methods of:
1. animateWithDuration:animations: (with or without completion:)
2. transitionWithView:duration:options:animations:completion:
Note that these methods will require you to learn a little bit about blocks, but it's worth it and I think blocks give tremendous power!
With the methods mentioned above, you could fade out your form and fade in your tableview, or maybe just move the form off-screen while the table view flies in. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.
u can add a table in ur xib.Initially make it hidden, & when u need to show it unhide it & also if u want to update table's data , you can reload the data of the table.
I am new to iPhone development, and I am working on modifications to an existing iPhone app. The high-level overview of the issue is this.
I have a button displaying a pop-up containing a UITableView.
I'd like to click on a menu item and display a second UITableView with sub-items, including a back option. If the user clicks back, they go the original UITableView. If the sub-item has additional sub-items underneath it, it should (when clicked) launch another UITableView with these options. There is also a back button as a menu item that will allow the user to navigate to the previous menu displayed.
The challenge here is that I am not using a navigation controller. the original developer only wants to add UITable Views to the stack, add transitions between them as you go from one menu to the other. Most of the tutorials I have seen and tried utilize a navigation controller and Interface Builder to associate the UITableViews.
Right now, I have an XML data source populating the menu, and when I click on a menu item, the titles change correctly, but still uses the same UITableView to display the options - this has consequences of course, as some of the sub-items may not fit on a screen.
any thoughts on how this can be done? I can post some code if necessary, although I think the general description should be able to ring a bell with one of you smart guys!
This can be done in numerous ways.
I haven't done this first one, but you can probably create a UINavigationController and set its view to the appropriate frame (inside the bubble) hide the navigation bar and set the action of your back button to pop the current view controller.
Another method is to have multiple tableviews on one controller, the delegate and datasource methods have the UITableView as an argument so you can distinguish them when setting the height of your rows, headers etc and when returning a UITableViewCell.
The way I've chosen to deal with such configurations is to have one UITableView and have only the datasource change. When you reload, insert, delete rows or reload the whole table, you can change anything you want depending on the current datasource level. The easiest none animated way is to reload the whole table.
a) If your "options" go off-screen height wise (you want fixed height) table change the - (CGFloat)tableview:(UITableView *)table heightForRowAtSection:(NSInteger)section return value
b) If your "options" go off-screen length wise either make your cell's default textLabel flexible: cell.textLabel.adjustsFontSizeToFitWidth = YES; cell.textLabel.minimumFontSize = 14; or have custom cells (lookup subclassing UITableViewCell, which is recommended) for each datasource level.
If you subclass TableViewCells remember to have different dequeue cell identifiers for each level, so the table doesn't provide you with another level's cell class.
For the "stack" of tableviews or datasources, you can have an NSMutableArray with addObject for push and removeLastObject for pop.
For animations, UITableViews can animate their rows/sections for 3. (see documentation for insert, delete, reload - Rows/Sections UITableView class reference), for 2. you can even have UIView (if not CoreAnimation as Grimless suggested) animations, that move the current tableview to the left (setFrame:) and the next tableview from the right (setFrame offscreen before animation and then in place in the beginAnimation-commitAnimation clause), but make sure you add the tableviews in a container view (the bubble interior) that clips its subviews.
Oi. This is gonna be a tough one. My suggestion would be to maintain your own stack implementation. Then, use CoreAnimation to add/remove UITableViews from your main view controller to get animated effects. So whenever the user clicks on an element in the current table view, the appropriate controller creates a new controller and table view, and then your custom navigation controller pushes the old one onto the stack, removes the old table view from the main view, sets the new controller as the current one, and adds the new table view to the main view. Kinda messy, but I think it will work.
What is the best approach to implement tabs that look like web applications on the iPhone, like the screenshot below (notice the "Checkin-Info-Friends" tabs)? These are not part of the UIKit standard library, but seems to be very common lately.
I've spent considerable time developing applications for the iPhone, but not developing controls like that one. What would be the best approach here:
create a new UIView for each tab content, and add the three subviews to the mainview straight away?
create new UIViews only when the user clicks on each of the tabs?
Put all the content in a UIScrollView, and just change the page as the user clicks on each tab?
Maybe there are open source controls for this out there? I couldn't find anything.
(source: foursquaregame.com)
My approach to a similar problem was to make all 4 (in my case) tab views, but respond to didReceiveMemoryWarning by releasing all but the current tab view. (Then, of course, you must make sure that you create the new view, if it doesn't exist, when the user chooses a new tab.)
I thought this was a good compromise - a speedy reaction to the user at first (and in my case memory footprint is at its lowest at this point in my app), and then a response to low memory to avoid being shot.
I think it best just to have three UIView* references to the subviews in the parent view or view controller, all initially null, then to have subroutine to hide the other two views if they are visible and either construct and show or just show the new view. Assuming no extraordinary memory requirements.
I think with such a small screen area load/unload concerns at the subview level are unlikely to be a concern, but if the parent views need to be loaded/unloaded, the subviews should all go (be both hidden and unloaded), and on reload, loadView should call the routine described in the last paragraph at startup.
If there is in fact a great deal of memory or resource use by any of the three subviews, then my advice is reversed and each of the subviews and/or any memory-intensive objects behind them should be not only hidden but unloaded whenever possible. I think with your use of Google maps there, a need to unload when hidden might apply to that.
Is this th right point to make? Is there some extra detail I'm missing?
You can have each tab be a real view controller with nib and everything. The only catch is that you must forward on the standard view controller calls you want to receive (viewWillAppear, etc) but it makes the coding much cleaner since you code just as you would for any other view (although for a smaller space).
You call each controllers "view" property to get out the view, which you add as a subview of a container view you have under the tabs.
If all three are table views, you might get away with using a single UITableViewController that changes contents based on the selected tab. Otherwise I second KHG's comment of using real view controllers to back up each of the subviews.
For the tabs themselves consider subclassing UISegmentedControl.
I have been spending time learning how to use the iPhone SDK. I've read "Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK" from cover to cover and I've never seen an example of multiple views within one XIB.
To illustrate what I mean, here is a screen shot of a XIB with the simple configuration of what I'm referring to:
alt text http://theopensourceu.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/one-xib-multiple-views.png
I figure that there has to be a very specific reason that I've never seen this. In Apple's examples and in all of my readings thus far, multiple XIBs are used with only a single 'view' (and sometimes the Navigation Controller or a Tab Bar Controller, etc). What is the reason for this? Should I avoid multiple views inside a XIB? What are the advantages or disadvantages to to either method?
Thank you in advance
It's a question of memory optimization and loading times. If you put all your views in one XIB, then when your application launches, it has to load the entire XIB into memory and construct all of the objects for all of the controls, and this takes a non-trivial amount of time.
If instead you separate your views into separate XIBs, then your app will start up much faster, because only the XIB containing the initial view will be loaded, and it will also use less memory at first. Then, when the view changes, you can load the XIB containing the new view lazily. This will incur a minor hitch when opening a view for the first time. If you're really trying to optimize memory use, you can also unload the previous view when switching views, but I wouldn't recommend this, as this will incur a hitch every time you switch views, instead of just the first time you switch to any given view.
Following up on the previous answer, there are some times when you would like to load multiple views at the same time. Here's an example: You are displaying a report with multiple pages and you're going to use a UIScrollView to manage them. When the user is done browsing the report, he will close the report which will dismiss the view.
Create a UIScrollView in a XIB along with a UIView for each page you need. Since the UIViews are part of the XIB, they will be loaded into memory together, all at once, when the report is opened. Create two UIViewControllers and use them to display the page being viewed and the one being scrolled to. As the user moves through the pages, re-use the UIViewController on the page being scrolled away from to hold the page being scrolled to.
This will ensure great performance while the user is flipping through the pages. It loads all the pages at once up front into memory. I only uses two UIViewControllers, and it just changes which views are in them and moves them around.
This also has the great benefit of having all of the pages in one XIB. It makes it easier to edit, and quicker to load than separate XIB's. You just have to make sure you have the memory to load all the pages at once. If it's static content (such as in my case) it's a great way to go.
If you're looking for a good example of how to do this, I found this resource to be an excellent starting point:
http://cocoawithlove.com/2009/01/multiple-virtual-pages-in-uiscrollview.html
This is a warning to anyone trying to implement landscape and portrait with two views in a single XIB (iOS 4 with Xcode 4). The primary disadvantage of having two views in a single XIB–for me–was that you can only connect a single UIOutlet object in a XIB to a single UIOutlet object in a view controller.
So, for example, if you have a XIB with a view for landscape and a view for portrait, and both views contain the same interface objects in different positions (such as a UILabel in landscape and a UILabel in portrait). It is not possible to link the UILabel in your portrait view and the UILabel object in the landscape view to a single UILabel object in the view controller at the same time.
I find this a disappointment, as the iOS UIViewController documentation (iOS 4.3) suggested that I could implement custom landscape and portrait views by switching between two views programmatically as the screen rotates.
After spending quite some time to figure out how to do this, I discovered that it is possible to have two different views attached to a single view controller, but you need to have outlets for both views. For example, in my view controller, I have two UILabel objects (one to connect to a UILabel in the portrait view; one to connect to a UILabel in the landscape view). In my code, every time I update the landscape outlet, I also update the portrait landscape.
Not very elegant, but it works, and as this is for a simple view with one screen, it won't use up too much memory to have have all the UI objects duplicated in the controller and views. I wouldn't create a project that did it that way again, but it was a good enough work-around for that project.
One reason I place multiple views in one xib is because unlike storyboard xibs don't allow placing header and footer in the table view itself. So I create to separate view for header and footer view and assign them in viewDidLoad.