viewWillAppear, viewDidAppear not being called, not firing - iphone

(This is both question and answer since it took quite a bit of digging to find the real answer.)
Symptom: viewWillAppear, viewDidAppear were not being called in my UIViewController.
Cause: Embedding a UINavigationController or UITabBarController (my case) in a UIViewController somehow interrupts with the calling of these methods.
Solution: Call them manually in the UIViewController that contains the aforementioned UINavigationController / UITabBarController.
For example (assuming projectNavigationController is your UINavigationController):
-(void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
[projectNavigationController viewWillAppear:animated];
}
-(void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated {
[super viewWillDisappear:animated];
[projectNavigationController viewWillDisappear:animated];
}
-(void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated {
[super viewDidAppear:animated];
[projectNavigationController viewDidAppear:animated];
}
-(void)viewDidDisappear:(BOOL)animated {
[super viewDidDisappear:animated];
[projectNavigationController viewDidDisappear:animated];
}
In my case I had an inner UITabBarController and I called the methods accordingly and all was solved.
(Attribution on the solution: http://davidebenini.it/2009/01/03/viewwillappear-not-being-called-inside-a-uinavigationcontroller/)

I'm going to go ahead and disagree with #St3fan, and use UIKit as the counter-example.
However, the wisdom (or lack thereof), of embedding controllers in general should be guided by sane UI design principles.
The easiest counter-example is UINavigationControllers embedded in UITabBarControllers. These appear all over the place. Just off the top of my head, the iPod app on iPhone, and Contacts within the Phone app on iPhone.
I was curious enough to bother to check what they do with the views (add to the "super-controller" view or to the UIWindow. I was pretty sure I was going to find that the sub-controller views were descendants of the super-controller views in the view hierarchy, which is contrary to St3fan's recommendation.
I whipped up a very quick iPhone app hooking everything up in InterfaceBuilder to create a UITabBarController based app with two tabs, the first of which was a UINavigationController with a plain ole UIViewController as it's root view controller, and a 2nd tab with a plain old UIViewController just so I had a 2nd tab to click later.
Sprinkle in some NSLog statements to output the various UIView's for the controllers we see this:
tabBarController.view = <UILayoutContainerView: 0x5b0dc80; ...
navigationController.view = <UILayoutContainerView: 0x59469a0; ...
rootViewController.view = <UIView: 0x594bb70; ...
Superview: <UIViewControllerWrapperView: 0x594cc90; ...
Superview: <UINavigationTransitionView: 0x594a420; ...
Superview: <UILayoutContainerView: 0x59469a0; ... // navigationController.view
Superview: <UIViewControllerWrapperView: 0x594b430; ...
Superview: <UITransitionView: 0x5b0e110; ...
Superview: <UILayoutContainerView: 0x5b0dc80; ... // tabBarController.view
Superview: <UIWindow: 0x5942a30; ...
The lines prefixed with "Superview" were the output from walking up the rootViewController.view's superview chain until hitting nil.
Then of course a quick glance at the call stack in a couple of places where viewDidDisappear would get called on the root view controller.
First, the call stack when viewDidDisappear is called on the root controller as a result of a new controller being pushed on to the stack:
-[RootController viewDidDisappear:]
-[UINavigationController navigationTransitionView:didEndTransition:fromView:toView:]
...
Second, the call stack when another tab is selected in the top-most UITabBarController:
-[RootController viewDidDisappear:]
-[UINavigationController viewDidDisappear:]
-[UITabBarController transitionFromViewController:toViewController:transition:shouldSetSelected:]
So in all cases, it seems that Apple decided that controllers should be calling the various viewDidAppear, etc methods on their embedded subcontrollers and that the view's should be embedded similarly. I think the OP hit this nail right on the head if we're to take UIKit design as a good lead to follow.

I just saw this same circumstance. Earlier the interface builder segue triggered by a table cell selection had stopped working and after some exasperation digging into the code, I just set it up manually, calling from the cell-selection override in the table view delegate.
Later I made some layout changes in the called view controller and saw that viewDidAppear wasn't being called, as described above. The debug output made reference to "nested push operations" or something, and since I had a big comment to myself in my manual push operation
#warning I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO DO THIS!!
I breakpointed the segue code and, sure enough, the IB segue was now working, and it was my manual operation in the table cell selection code that was messing up the delegate calls in the called view. I removed the manual code and everything is fine again.
It does seem odd that the cell select code gets called after the view is pushed. I have to do a protocol and delegate to get the indexpath of the selected cell in the caller.

Related

UIModalTransitionStylePartialCurl with UITabBarController

This question has been asked a lot e.g. here but as far as I can see is yet to be answered in full.
I have a UITabBarController with a UINavigationController as the root vc for one of the tabs, which itself has a MKMapView as its root vc. The behaviour I want is for the map to partially curl upwards, while leaving the tab bar in place (similar to the Maps app).
So far all I have managed to get working is for the whole view to curl, which isn't as nice.
Solutions I have seen are to set the hidesBottomBarWhenPushed property to NO, which would make sense however this doesn't seem to work, (unless I am doing something wrong).
For clarity, my code is as follows:
MyVC *aView = [MyVC init];
aView.modalTransitionStyle = UIModalTransitionStylePartialCurl;
aView.hidesBottomBarWhenPushed = NO;
For the presenting part, I have tried the two alternatives below, neither of which seem to work:
[self presentModalViewController:updateStatus animated:YES];
[[self navigationController] presentModalViewController:updateStatus animated:YES];
Any help much appreciated.
I've scoured StackOverflow (and the Internet) for a solution to this problem. The question has been asked many times, but as you note, never sufficiently answered. Many solutions give an acceptable solution if it is unimportant whether, e.g., a lower toolbar curls up as well.
Others have provided a solution using UIView animations / CoreAnimation rather than UIModalTransitionStylePartialCurl as a modal transition style; this is at worst a solution not allowed in the App Store, and at best is not quite the same effect as one gets from UIModalTransitionStylePartialCurl (e.g. the shape of the curl is different).
None of these solutions have provided an answer that mimics Apple's solution in the Maps app (i.e., using UIModalTransitionStylePartialCurl but leaving an un-curled UIToolbar at the bottom of the screen).
I will continue in this tradition of incomplete answers, since you ask about a UITabBarController and my solution doesn't specifically address that case. It does, however, solve the problem I had, which was to get a half page curl with an un-curled toolbar at the bottom.
There must be a more elegant way to do this, but this is how I managed.
The rootViewController of my AppDelegate is a subclass of UIViewController, which I'll call TAContainerViewController. TAContainerViewController manages a) the actual contents of the screen (the "stuff to be curled"), TAContentViewController, and b) the contents "behind" the TAContentViewController (e.g. settings), which I'll call TAUnderCurlViewController.
My instance of TAContainerViewController had properties for a TAContentViewController and a TAUnderCurlViewController. The UIView that was my content was a subview of TAContentViewController's view property; likewise what the user sees under the curl is the view property of the TAUnderCurlViewController.
In the init method of TAContainerViewController I make sure to do the following:
_underCurlVC.modalTransitionStyle = UIModalTransitionStylePartialCurl;
And to curl the contents to reveal under the page, I set up an action that calls this code:
[self.contentVC presentModalViewController:self.underCurlVC animated:YES];`
where self is the TAContainerViewController, contentVC is an instance of TAContentViewController, and underCurlVC is an instance of TAUnderCurlViewController.
To dismiss the view, simply [self.contentVC dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];.
Some strangeness seems to occur with the frame of contentVC when the modal view is dismissed, so I manually reset the frame when the modal view is dismissed.
I've posted a sample project with more details on Github. Hopefully someone can take this and turn it into a slightly more elegant solution, or expand it to work with a UINavigationController or UITabBarController. I think the trick is to pull the View Controllers out of the well-defined relationships in the Cocoa subclasses, so maybe subclassing those specialty View Controllers would do it.
Tim Arnold's response worked great for me, thanks!
One trap to watch out for: your modal page-curl transition will take over the whole screen if your content view controller is added as a child of the container view controller. You could just not add it as a child, but then none of the view lifecycle methods will get called on your content controller (e.g. viewDidLoad, viewWillAppear), which could be a problem.
Fortunately, there is a way around this. In your container controller:
Add your content controller as a child in viewDidLoad
Remove it as a child in viewDidAppear
Re-add it as a child in viewWillDisappear.
That way, your content controller gets its lifecycle methods called, while still being able to do a modal page-curl transition without taking up the whole screen.
Here is the entire code of a bare-bones solution:
#interface XXContainerController : UIViewController
#property (strong, nonatomic) UIViewController *contentController;
#property (nonatomic) BOOL curled;
#end
#implementation XXContainerController
#synthesize contentController = _contentController;
#synthesize curled = _curled;
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
self.contentController = [self.storyboard
instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:#"SomeControllerInStoryboard"];
// Add content controller as child view controller.
// This way, it will receive all the view lifecycle events
[self addChildViewController:self.contentController];
self.contentController.view.frame = self.view.bounds;
[self.view addSubview:self.contentController.view];
[self.contentController didMoveToParentViewController:self];
}
- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewDidAppear:animated];
// Remove the content controller as child view controller.
// This way, the modal page curl transition will
// not take over the whole screen.
// NOTE: need to wait until content controller has appeared
// (which will happen later).
// Achieve this by running the code at the end of the animation loop
[UIView animateWithDuration:0 animations:nil completion:^(BOOL finished) {
[self.contentController removeFromParentViewController];
}];
}
- (void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewWillDisappear:animated];
// Add the content controller as child view controller again
// so it receives the view lifecycle events
[self addChildViewController:self.contentController];
}
- (void)setCurled:(BOOL)curled
{
if (curled == _curled) return;
_curled = curled;
// Curl up the content view and show underneath controller's view
if (curled) {
// Note you can specify any modal transition in storyboard
// E.g. page curl, flip horizontal
[self.contentController
performSegueWithIdentifier:#"SomeModalSegueDefinedInStoryboard"
sender:self];
// Uncurl and show the content controller's view again
} else {
[self.contentController dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
// Have to do this, otherwise the content controller's view
// gets messed up for some reason
self.contentController.view.frame = self.view.bounds;
}
}
#end

viewWillAppear does not run when using addSubView!

I'm stuck! I can't see why viewWillAppear doesn't run in my code but viewDidLoad runs. If I understand it correctly viewDidLoad runs once on the first instance and viewWillAppear runs every time a view is added to the stack of views to display.
I see others have had this issue but some how their solutions of calling viewWillAppear directly causes my app to crash. Other solutions were related to Navigation Controller and pushingView's but thats not what i'm using either! What am I missing?
Thanks in advance for your help! :)
See below:
View Controller #1 - Currently being displayed on screen
-(IBAction)someButtonPressed:(id)sender{
NSLog(#"FirstViewController - someButtonPressed");
SecondViewController *secondViewController = [[SecondViewController alloc] initWithNibName:#"SecondViewController" bundle:nil];
secondViewController.myLocation = self.myLocation;
secondViewController.myDatabase = self.myDatabase;
[self.view addSubview:secondViewController.view];
//[secondViewController viewWillAppear:YES];
}
SecondViewController:
- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {
NSLog(#"SecondViewController - viewWillAppear");
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
// updating ivars with data
}
// Implement viewDidLoad to do additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.
- (void)viewDidLoad {
NSLog(#"SecondViewController - viewDidLoad");
[super viewDidLoad];
}
If I understand it correctly viewDidLoad runs once on the first instance and viewWillAppear runs every time a view is added to the stack of views to display.
-viewDidLoad is called every time a UIViewController's view is loaded. That may be many times during a single controller's life as the view may be unloaded to free up memory when it is not visible and reloaded, triggering another call to -viewDidLoad, when needed.
-viewWillAppear: is called when a UIViewController's view becomes visible. However UIKit assumes that UIViewController's views will fill their window. Nesting UIViewControllers' views is an example of abusing UIViewControllers and will result in unexpected behavior. As you have seen.
See About Custom View Controllers in the View Controller Programming Guide for iOS:
Each custom view controller object you create is responsible for managing all of the views in a single view hierarchy. In iPhone applications, the views in a view hierarchy traditionally cover the entire screen, but in iPad applications they may cover only a portion of the screen. The one-to-one correspondence between a view controller and the views in its view hierarchy is the key design consideration. You should not use multiple custom view controllers to manage different portions of the same view hierarchy. Similarly, you should not use a single custom view controller object to manage multiple screens worth of content.
If you wrote a custom UIViewController Container you might have overwritten the following method, which leads to your described behavior.
- (BOOL)shouldAutomaticallyForwardAppearanceMethods{
return NO;
}
In this case you have to manually handle beginAppearanceTransition/endAppearanceTransition.
See Apples View Controller Containment article
viewWillAppear: is called when a view controller is displayed in one of the normal ways (e.g. by selecting a tab in a UITabBarController, by pushing onto a UINavigationController, by being popped back to in a UINavigationController, by being presented with presentModalViewController:animated, by being uncovered after dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:, etc). Just displaying a view with addSubview: does not call the method.
It is possible to correctly call viewWillAppear: manually, but in general it's better to use one of the normal ways mentioned above.
Just try this.. I got it working :)
- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
NSLog(#"SecondViewController - viewWillAppear");
// updating ivars with data
}
When you push view or present a view controller by pushViewController:animated or presentModelViewController:animated:, they will call viewWillAppear:animated:, and else method for you. But if you addSubview: manually, you need to call those method by self.

UIViewController: viewWillAppear is called, viewDidAppear not

In a UIViewController subclass, I have the following methods:
-(void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
// do something
myTextField.text = #"Default";
}
- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated {
[super viewDidAppear:animated];
// do something
[myTextField selectAll:self];
[myTextField becomeFirstResponder];
}
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
// do something
myTextField.delegate = self;
}
The NIB has been created using Interface Builder. The corresponding view controller object is pushed by the navigation controller through pushViewController.
The inteded behavior is to show a default text entry in a text field, to select the entire text and to set the text field as first responder. [Edit: I've noticed that selecting all and making first responder makes no sense as the selection would dissapear; still, I wonder why the methods behave as described next.]
However, while methods viewDidLoad and viewWillAppear are called, the method viewDidAppear is not called. Can anybody tell me why? Most questions I found on the web and here deal with both viewWillAppear/viewDidAppear are not working; I also understood that in subviews or programmatically created views these methods are not evoked; but this does not apply in case and also I wonder why one of these "lifecycle" methods is evoked and the other not.
Any idea? Thanks!
I had this issue happen to me: viewWillAppear was being called but viewDidAppear was not!
I finally figured out that this was because I had a tabBarController where I overloaded it's own viewDidAppear and forgot the [super viewDidAppear:animated];
It threw off every VC in every tab! adding that line back in fixed it for my other VC's.
Hope this helps someone!
There is one case when viewWillAppear will be called but viewDidAppear will not.
Suppose you have two viewControllers and you push from the first to the second controller. Then, using the swipe, you want to go back to the first one, both controllers are displayed at the same time and at that moment viewWillAppear will be called from the first controller.
This way, you do not finish the swipe and stay on the second controller and viewDidAppear will not be called from the first controller.
I had the same problem.
I had copy/pasted viewDidAppear to create viewWillAppear but had forgotten to change the super.viewDidAppear() call. This then seemed to stop viewDidAppear from being called.
It sounds like somewhere in your code you have missed or messed-up a call to the superclass.
The call to viewDidAppear: should always follow viewWillAppear: unless you are doing something custom, which you say you don't. I don't know why it doesn't work but here are a few ideas:
Could it be that you are doing something strange in one of the delegate methods for UITextFieldDelegate? It's unlikely that it would affect viewDidAppear: being called but it could be a culprit.
Have you loaded a lot of stuff into memory before pushing the view? I'm not sure what would happen if you got a memory warning between viewWillAppear: and viewDidAppear:.
Have you tried to do a Clean? Sometimes that can help.
In cases like these when it should work I usually create a new class and the introduce the functionality one at a the time to see if I can get it work that way. I tried your code in a new Navigation Based project where I added a new UIViewController with an outlet to the text field. Then I pasted the code from the question and it did work as expected.
This can be because you added a child view controller to your parent VC in viewDidLoad or viewWillAppear. The child's appearance prevents the call to viewDidAppear.
This is a crazy thing to do, and I only know because this was a bug in my code. I meant to add the child VC to this VC, not the parent VC.

How to automatically call a method after popping a view controller off the stack on the iPhone

I need to update the parent view on an iPhone after popping a child view off the navigation stack. How can I setup the parent view to be notified or receive an automatic method call when the child is popped off the stack and the parent becomes visible again?
The user enters data on the child page that I want to display on the parent page after the user is done and pops the view.
Thanks for you help!
I just resolved this self same problem - and the answers above are almost correct, they just forgot about setting the delegate.
I have a root view controller that displays the size of a list, calls a child view controller that may alter the size of a list, and must update the size upon return.
When I create my parent view (SettingsView below), and add it as the root view of a UINavigationController, I make sure to set the UINavigationController's delegate before I display the view - that's the key part:
SettingsView *sv = [[SettingsView alloc] initWithNibName:#"SettingsView" bundle:nil];
UINavigationController *nc = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:sv];
[nc setDelegate:sv];
In the parent view, implement the UINavigationControllerDelegate protocol:
#interface SettingsView : UIViewController <UINavigationControllerDelegate>
and provide the willShowViewController method:
- (void)navigationController:(UINavigationController *)navigationController willShowViewController:(UIViewController *)viewController animated:(BOOL)animated
{
// Your code to update the parent view
}
This is called after the child view is dismissed, and before the parent view is redisplayed.
I had the need to do something like this as well. In the ViewController that owned my UINavigationController, I had to implement willShowViewController, like this:
- (void)navigationController:(UINavigationController *)navigationController willShowViewController:(UIViewController *)viewController animated:(BOOL)animated {
}
That method is called whenever the UINavigationController changes views. If I'm understanding your question correctly, I think this should do what you want.
I think there is some confusion here. UIViews are not pushed to and popped from the UINavigationController's stack. What is being pushed and popped is UIViewControllers, which in turn handle one or (more often) several views each.
Fortunately, the UIViewController has these methods:
-(void) viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated;
-(void) viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated;
-(void) viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated;
-(void) viewDidDisappear:(BOOL)animated;
These are called whenever the view is about to (dis)appear, or has just (dis)appeared. I works with tab bars, modal views and navigation controllers. (And it's a good idea to make use of these when you implement custom controllers.)
So in your case, if I understand correctly, you simply have to override the viewWillAppear: or viewDidAppear: method on what you call the "parent page" (which is presumably handled by a UIViewController) and put in code to update the appearance of the page to reflect the data just entered.
(If I remember correctly, you must make sure that the UINavigationController gets a viewWill/DidAppear: message when it is first displayed, in order for these messages to later be sent to its child controllers. If you set this up with a template or in IB you probably don't have to worry about it.)
Felixyz answer did the trick for me. Calling the view will appear method will run the code in it every time the view appears. Different from view did load, which runs its code only when the view is first loaded. So your parent view would not update itself if a child view altered the info displayed in the parent, and was then popped off the sack. But if the parents calls view will appear, the code gets ran every time the view shows back up.
Make sure to call the super method at the same time. Proper implementation would look like this:
- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
NSLog(#"View Appearing");
}
If you need to notify one controller to another you may use delegation pattern as described here (see 2nd answer).
Unfortunately there is no automatic notification(AFAIK) for exact task as you described.
To meet your needs you may send message to delegate (i.e. to your parent controller) in viewWillDisappear function of your child controller.

iPhone viewWillAppear not firing

I've read numerous posts about people having problems with viewWillAppear when you do not create your view hierarchy just right. My problem is I can't figure out what that means.
If I create a RootViewController and call addSubView on that controller, I would expect the added view(s) to be wired up for viewWillAppear events.
Does anyone have an example of a complex programmatic view hierarchy that successfully receives viewWillAppear events at every level?
Apple's Docs state:
Warning: If the view belonging to a view controller is added to a view hierarchy directly, the view controller will not receive this message. If you insert or add a view to the view hierarchy, and it has a view controller, you should send the associated view controller this message directly. Failing to send the view controller this message will prevent any associated animation from being displayed.
The problem is that they don't describe how to do this. What does "directly" mean? How do you "indirectly" add a view?
I am fairly new to Cocoa and iPhone so it would be nice if there were useful examples from Apple besides the basic Hello World crap.
If you use a navigation controller and set its delegate, then the view{Will,Did}{Appear,Disappear} methods are not invoked.
You need to use the navigation controller delegate methods instead:
navigationController:willShowViewController:animated:
navigationController:didShowViewController:animated:
I've run into this same problem. Just send a viewWillAppear message to your view controller before you add it as a subview. (There is one BOOL parameter which tells the view controller if it's being animated to appear or not.)
[myViewController viewWillAppear:NO];
Look at RootViewController.m in the Metronome example.
(I actually found Apple's example projects great. There's a LOT more than HelloWorld ;)
I finally found a solution for this THAT WORKS!
UINavigationControllerDelegate
I think the gist of it is to set your nav control's delegate to the viewcontroller it is in, and implement UINavigationControllerDelegate and it's two methods. Brilliant! I'm so excited i finally found a solution!
Thanks iOS 13.
ViewWillDisappear, ViewDidDisappear, ViewWillAppear and
ViewDidAppear won't get called on a presenting view controller on
iOS 13 which uses a new modal presentation that doesn't cover the
whole screen.
Credits are going to Arek Holko. He really saved my day.
I just had the same issue. In my application I have 2 navigation controllers and pushing the same view controller in each of them worked in one case and not in the other. I mean that when pushing the exact same view controller in the first UINavigationController, viewWillAppear was called but not when pushed in the second navigation controller.
Then I came across this post UINavigationController should call viewWillAppear/viewWillDisappear methods
And realized that my second navigation controller did redefine viewWillAppear. Screening the code showed that I was not calling
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
I added it and it worked !
The documentation says:
If you override this method, you must call super at some point in your implementation.
I've been using a navigation controller. When I want to either descend to another level of data or show my custom view I use the following:
[self.navigationController pushViewController:<view> animated:<BOOL>];
When I do this, I do get the viewWillAppear function to fire. I suppose this qualifies as "indirect" because I'm not calling the actual addSubView method myself. I don't know if this is 100% applicable to your application since I can't tell if you're using a navigation controller, but maybe it will provide a clue.
Firstly, the tab bar should be at the root level, ie, added to the window, as stated in the Apple documentation. This is key for correct behavior.
Secondly, you can use UITabBarDelegate / UINavigationBarDelegate to forward the notifications on manually, but I found that to get the whole hierarchy of view calls to work correctly, all I had to do was manually call
[tabBarController viewWillAppear:NO];
[tabBarController viewDidAppear:NO];
and
[navBarController viewWillAppear:NO];
[navBarController viewDidAppear:NO];
.. just ONCE before setting up the view controllers on the respective controller (right after allocation). From then on, it correctly called these methods on its child view controllers.
My hierarchy is like this:
window
UITabBarController (subclass of)
UIViewController (subclass of) // <-- manually calls [navController viewWill/DidAppear
UINavigationController (subclass of)
UIViewController (subclass of) // <-- still receives viewWill/Did..etc all the way down from a tab switch at the top of the chain without needing to use ANY delegate methods
Just calling the mentioned methods on the tab/nav controller the first time ensured that ALL the events were forwarded correctly. It stopped me needing to call them manually from the UINavigationBarDelegate / UITabBarControllerDelegate methods.
Sidenote:
Curiously, when it didn't work, the private method
- (void)transitionFromViewController:(UIViewController*)aFromViewController toViewController:(UIViewController*)aToViewController
.. which you can see from the callstack on a working implementation, usually calls the viewWill/Did.. methods but didn't until I performed the above (even though it was called).
I think it is VERY important that the UITabBarController is at window level though and the documents seem to back this up.
Hope that was clear(ish), happy to answer further questions.
As no answer is accepted and people (like I did) land here I give my variation. Though I am not sure that was the original problem. When the navigation controller is added as a subview to a another view you must call the viewWillAppear/Dissappear etc. methods yourself like this:
- (void) viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
[subNavCntlr viewWillAppear:animated];
}
- (void) viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewWillDisappear:animated];
[subNavCntlr viewWillDisappear:animated];
}
Just to make the example complete. This code appears in my ViewController where I created and added the the navigation controller into a view that I placed on the view.
- (void)viewDidLoad {
// This is the root View Controller
rootTable *rootTableController = [[rootTable alloc]
initWithStyle:UITableViewStyleGrouped];
subNavCntlr = [[UINavigationController alloc]
initWithRootViewController:rootTableController];
[rootTableController release];
subNavCntlr.view.frame = subNavContainer.bounds;
[subNavContainer addSubview:subNavCntlr.view];
[super viewDidLoad];
}
the .h looks like this
#interface navTestViewController : UIViewController <UINavigationControllerDelegate> {
IBOutlet UIView *subNavContainer;
UINavigationController *subNavCntlr;
}
#end
In the nib file I have the view and below this view I have a label a image and the container (another view) where i put the controller in. Here is how it looks. I had to scramble some things as this was work for a client.
Views are added "directly" by calling [view addSubview:subview].
Views are added "indirectly" by methods such as tab bars or nav bars that swap subviews.
Any time you call [view addSubview:subviewController.view], you should then call [subviewController viewWillAppear:NO] (or YES as your case may be).
I had this problem when I implemented my own custom root-view management system for a subscreen in a game. Manually adding the call to viewWillAppear cured my problem.
Correct way to do this is using UIViewController containment api.
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
// Do any additional setup after loading the view.
UIViewController *viewController = ...;
[self addChildViewController:viewController];
[self.view addSubview:viewController.view];
[viewController didMoveToParentViewController:self];
}
I use this code for push and pop view controllers:
push:
[self.navigationController pushViewController:detaiViewController animated:YES];
[detailNewsViewController viewWillAppear:YES];
pop:
[[self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:YES] viewWillAppear:YES];
.. and it works fine for me.
A very common mistake is as follows.
You have one view, UIView* a, and another one, UIView* b.
You add b to a as a subview.
If you try to call viewWillAppear in b, it will never be fired, because it is a subview of a
iOS 13 bit my app in the butt here. If you've noticed behavior change as of iOS 13 just set the following before you push it:
yourVC.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationFullScreen;
You may also need to set it in your .storyboard in the Attributes inspector (set Presentation to Full Screen).
This will make your app behave as it did in prior versions of iOS.
I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think that adding a view to the view hierarchy directly means calling -addSubview: on the view controller's view (e.g., [viewController.view addSubview:anotherViewController.view]) instead of pushing a new view controller onto the navigation controller's stack.
I think that adding a subview doesn't necessarily mean that the view will appear, so there is not an automatic call to the class's method that it will
I think what they mean "directly" is by hooking things up just the same way as the xcode "Navigation Application" template does, which sets the UINavigationController as the sole subview of the application's UIWindow.
Using that template is the only way I've been able to get the Will/Did/Appear/Disappear methods called on the object ViewControllers upon push/pops of those controllers in the UINavigationController. None of the other solutions in the answers here worked for me, including implementing them in the RootController and passing them through to the (child) NavigationController. Those functions (will/did/appear/disappear) were only called in my RootController upon showing/hiding the top-level VCs, my "login" and navigationVCs, not the sub-VCs in the navigation controller, so I had no opportunity to "pass them through" to the Nav VC.
I ended up using the UINavigationController's delegate functionality to look for the particular transitions that required follow-up functionality in my app, and that works, but it requires a bit more work in order to get both the disappear and appear functionality "simulated".
Also it's a matter of principle to get it to work after banging my head against this problem for hours today. Any working code snippets using a custom RootController and a child navigation VC would be much appreciated.
In case this helps anyone. I had a similar problem where my ViewWillAppear is not firing on a UITableViewController. After a lot of playing around, I realized that the problem was that the UINavigationController that is controlling my UITableView is not on the root view. Once I fix that, it is now working like a champ.
I just had this problem myself and it took me 3 full hours (2 of which googling) to fix it.
What turned out to help was to simply delete the app from the device/simulator, clean and then run again.
Hope that helps
[self.navigationController setDelegate:self];
Set the delegate to the root view controller.
In my case problem was with custom transition animation.
When set modalPresentationStyle = .custom viewWillAppear not called
in custom transition animation class need call methods:
beginAppearanceTransition and endAppearanceTransition
For Swift. First create the protocol to call what you wanted to call in viewWillAppear
protocol MyViewWillAppearProtocol{func myViewWillAppear()}
Second, create the class
class ForceUpdateOnViewAppear: NSObject, UINavigationControllerDelegate {
func navigationController(_ navigationController: UINavigationController, willShow viewController: UIViewController, animated: Bool){
if let updatedCntllr: MyViewWillAppearProtocol = viewController as? MyViewWillAppearProtocol{
updatedCntllr.myViewWillAppear()
}
}
}
Third, make the instance of ForceUpdateOnViewAppear to be the member of the appropriate class that have the access to the Navigation Controller and exists as long as Navigation controller exists. It may be for example the root view controller of the navigation controller or the class that creates or present it. Then assign the instance of ForceUpdateOnViewAppear to the Navigation Controller delegate property as early as possible.
In my case that was just a weird bug on the ios 12.1 emulator. Disappeared after launching on real device.
I have created a class that solves this problem.
Just set it as a delegate of your navigation controller, and implement simple one or two methods in your view controller - that will get called when the view is about to be shown or has been shown via NavigationController
Here's the GIST showing the code
ViewWillAppear is an override method of UIViewController class so adding a subView will not call viewWillAppear, but when you present, push , pop, show , setFront Or popToRootViewController from a viewController then viewWillAppear for presented viewController will get called.
My issue was that viewWillAppear was not called when unwinding from a segue. The answer was to put a call to viewWillAppear(true) in the unwind segue in the View Controller that you segueing back to
#IBAction func unwind(for unwindSegue: UIStoryboardSegue, ViewController subsequentVC: Any) {
viewWillAppear(true)
}
I'm not sure this is the same problem that I solved.
In some occasions, method doesn't executed with normal way such as "[self methodOne]".
Try
- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
[self performSelector:#selector(methodOne)
withObject:nil afterDelay:0];
}
You should only have 1 UIViewController active at any time. Any subviews you want to manipulate should be exactly that - subVIEWS - i.e. UIView.
I use a simlple technique for managing my view hierarchy and have yet to run into a problem since I started doing things this way. There are 2 key points:
a single UIViewController should be used to manage "a screen's worth"
of your app
use UINavigationController for changing views
What do I mean by "a screen's worth"? It's a bit vague on purpose, but generally it's a feature or section of your app. If you've got a few screens with the same background image but different overlays/popups etc., that should be 1 view controller and several child views. You should never find yourself working with 2 view controllers. Note you can still instantiate a UIView in one view controller and add it as a subview of another view controller if you want certain areas of the screen to be shown in multiple view controllers.
As for UINavigationController - this is your best friend! Turn off the navigation bar and specify NO for animated, and you have an excellent way of switching screens on demand. You can push and pop view controllers if they're in a hierarchy, or you can prepare an array of view controllers (including an array containing a single VC) and set it to be the view stack using setViewControllers. This gives you total freedom to change VC's, while gaining all the advantages of working within Apple's expected model and getting all events etc. fired properly.
Here's what I do every time when I start an app:
start from a window-based app
add a UINavigationController as the window's rootViewController
add whatever I want my first UIViewController to be as the rootViewController of the nav
controller
(note starting from window-based is just a personal preference - I like to construct things myself so I know exactly how they are built. It should work fine with view-based template)
All events fire correctly and basically life is good. You can then spend all your time writing the important bits of your app and not messing about trying to manually hack view hierarchies into shape.