UINavigationController leak/understanding popViewController - iphone

I have a navigation controller and a table view. When someone click on the table view, I do the following:
MyViewController *myViewController = [[MyViewController alloc] initWithImage:image];
[image release];
[self.navigationController pushViewController:myViewController animated:YES];
[myViewController release];
myViewController will retain the image.
Now, if I go back and forth in the NavigationController, I get a leak because a new MyViewController gets created each time and apparently the popViewController doesn't release the myViewController.
My question:
Why doesn't popViewController release the controller?
How should I handle that? Put the myViewController as a member of my class and check if it already exists instead of creating it each time?
Thanks in advance for your help,

Apparently the problem was that this code was called in another thread and then this thread has to have another autorelease pool to let autorelease work correctly.

I usually declare the viewController once in the class, alloc in the init and push when needed. Then in the pushed view controller i adjust the view in viewWillAppear:

Related

viewController nib's view is nil?

I used to create viewController/views programmatically only.
Using xib is harder than I expected.
I found that self.view of an xib or any other subview is initially nil.
I created the viewController by [[MyViewController alloc] init]
and tried to [myViewController.imageView setImage: image]; //imageView is nil
NSLog(#"%p", myViewController.view); // access view here
[myViewController.imageView setImage: image]; //works now
I feel I'm missing something very basic. What would it be?
As described in the documentation for UIViewController, the views are lazily loaded when you first access the view property. The earliest you can reference them is in viewDidLoad.
In my experience this happens when I try to access the view before viewDidLoad fires, for instance trying to access this in the init method of the view controller. If this is the case, wait until after viewDidLoad fires to access the view.
Try
[[MyViewController alloc] initWithNibname:#"mynibname" bundle:nil]
in this format to allocate the proper view ....try it

ARC: When to set a viewController to nil

I'm still struggling a bit with the idea of ARC. Let's suppose I have two very complex viewControllers A and B that each have a lot of pictures in them which are retained by each view. For argument's sake, let's suppose the first ViewController (A) retains images which take up 75 MB in RAM. The other one (B) takes up 75 MB as well.
In my App Delegate I set up my NavigationController like so:
ViewControllerA *vcA = [[ViewControllerA alloc] init];
UINavigationController *navController = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:vcA];
[navController.navigationBar setHidden:YES];
[[self window] setRootViewController:navController];
When I switch from A to B, I do it like so in ViewControllerA.m:
ViewControllerB *vcB = [[ViewControllerB alloc] init];
[[self navigationController] pushViewController:vcB animated:YES];
When I switch back, I do it like so in ViewControllerB.m:
[[self navigationController] popToRootViewControllerAnimated:YES];
Now my big question is if I still have ViewController A in my memory when I'm in ViewController B? In this case, when does the compiler release a ViewController? Could I or should I release (i.e. set it to nil) one ViewController when it is not in use?
I'm sorry if the answer is clear or if I'm totally missing the point. So any answers and explanations would be highly appreciated.
Yes, you still have ViewControllerA (you can see this with Instruments next time). That has nothing to do with ARC, it's the same without it. Let me explain:
You create a UINavigationController and put UIViewController A as the root, A is retained (in ARC it's a strong property or something like that), as you can see UINavigationController needs it right?
Now you push UIViewController B, B and A exist on memory, you UINavigationController still needs UIViewController A, it's just not showing and the view can be unloaded, if the system needs memory, but it won't release A. When you pop UIViewController B, it is released, and if there aren't references for it (again, I assume this is how ARC works) it is dealloced.
Now your question is, when is the rootViewController dealloced? Well, UINavigationController always has a root! So, while you have a UINavigationController you have a rootViewController.
Let me know in the comments if you need further explaining.
I can't help you with ARC, cause I never used it (and I don't know if I really want).
But I can tell you one thing :
When you push your ViewControllers, they all are in the navigation stack. And untill they are in the stack, they remain in memory.
Without using ARC, if I autorelease eatch viewController I push, it will be released exactly when I would pop it from the stack.
If someone know more about ARC (and when it release allocated object) I would be glad to have more info.
Thanks
Your view controller A will be retained by navController so it won't be released. Even you set vcA to nil it will not be released because navController is retaining it.
The problem is that your controller retained lots resources (images) that takes lots memory. To solve this, you can allocate the resources on viewDidLoad and free them at viewDidUnload
for example
// in your view controller
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
self.image = // read image to memory
}
- (void)viewDidUnload {
[super viewDidUnload];
self.image = nil; // release the image to free memory
}
Then after view controller B is pushed to navController, view controller A will get notified by UIKit that it is not the displaying controller and it will unload the view if necessary in order to free memory for other class to use.

Kill View and back to rootViewController

I am new to IOS, sorry in advance if I ask a stupid question.
I use UITabBarController and navigationController to control view.
At my last view, I would like to have a button when the button is pressed, view will return to rootViewController which I set by MainWindow.xib file and kill any process which run in app background.
this is my code in the last view before I want to back to rootViewController:
-(IBAction)doneButtonPressed:(id)sender{
JourneyIndexViewController *journeyIndexVC = [[JourneyIndexViewController alloc] initWithNibName:#"JourneyIndexViewController" bundle:nil];
[journeyIndexVC setDistanceLabelValue:self.distanceLabelValue];
[self.navigationController pushViewController:journeyIndexVC animated:YES];
[journeyIndexVC release];
[self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
}
JourneyIndexViewController is the rootViewController that I set in MainWindow.xib.
Thank you very much for your advance support.
try
[self.navigationController popToRootViewControllerAnimated:YES];
You should take a look at this: UINavigationController Class Reference for better understanding
I am making a few assumptions here, but if JourneyIndexRootViewController is your rootViewController and is created in IB (in a nib), you do not need to re-crete it when pushing the button. It sounds like you simply need to remove the UINavigationController that you added on top of the rootViewController.
Try this. This should pop you back to the Previous View Controller.
[self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:NO];
Hope this helps

UIViewController custom titleView crashes app

I have a navigation based iPhone app.
When you press on a cell in the tableview a new UIViewController is pushed to the navigation stack. In this view controller I am setting a custom titleView in the viewDidLoad method:
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
// Setup custom navigation title
[self setTitle:#"Mediaportal"];
navItem = [[NavigationBarTitleItemViewController alloc] initWithNibName:#"NavigationBarTitleItem" bundle:nil];
[navItem setTitle:[theServer name]];
[navItem setSubTitle:#""];
[self.navigationItem setTitleView:navItem.view];
…
}
Once I switch back to the RootViewController:
[self.navigationController popToRootViewControllerAnimated:YES];
the app crashes with the following error (NSZombieEnabled=YES):
*** -[CALayer retain]: message sent to deallocated instance 0x5a5fd80
From what I can see the RootViewController still tries to access the custom titleView, which was deallocated with the second view controller. Once I comment out the custom titleView part in my code the app works.
I tried to set the navigationItem.titleView to nil (as found in the apple docs) before the second ViewController is deallocated, but that doesn't help.
Do you have a hint what I can do to prevent this crash?
Thanks,
Mark.
I had this exact same error a month or so ago, exactly the same situation. It drove me NUTS.
I discovered that the viewController i was popping too hadn't been deallocated at all. I had a custom UIButton subclass added to that view however that had been deallocated when the second view had been pushed. So when popping back, the UIButton wasn't there.
Check the view you are popping back to, to ensure you've not got any classes that you are deallocating, or are being autoreleased without you knowing.
Hope this helps.
I finally found the solution for it (a quite simple one).
I have to alloc and init the navItem through its property then it is being retained:
self.navItem = [[NavigationBarTitleItemViewController alloc] initWithNibName:#"NavigationBarTitleItem" bundle:nil];

release viewcontroller after presenting modally

I was watching CS193P Stanford course on Itunes, and in one of the lectures a demo was given and
There it was said you could present the viewcontroller modally and then release it. Roughly like this (I know this isn't perfect but I'm on my PC atm)
[self.view presentcontentmodally:myVC]
[myVC release];
However this seems to produce problems. If I put a NSLog(#"%d", [myVC retainCount]) between those two lines then it returns 2 implying it is ok to release. However when I dismiss the myVC the app crashes. Nothing in the NSlog and the debugger won't show where it stopped.
But I used malloc-history or something that some blog said would help. And found that it was the myVC.
So should I be releasing myVC?
(also when the modalVC has been dissmissed should the app's memory usuage go back to before the modalVC was presented?)
Yes, you should release your view controller after passing it to a modal navigation controller. Just make sure you are not passing in a previously retained view controller unless you plan to manage its release manually.
For example, follow the lifespan of _myViewController here:
MyViewController *_myViewController = [[MyViewController alloc] initWithNibName:#"MyViewController" bundle:nil];
UINavigationController *_modalNavigationController = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:_myViewController];
[_myViewController release], _myViewController = nil;
[[self navigationController] presentModalViewController:_modalNavigationController animated:YES];
[_modalNavigationController release], _modalNavigationController = nil;
The modal navigation controller will increment the retain count of _myViewController, essentially taking ownership of it.
Once the modal navigation controller is dismissed and you are back to your original navigation controller, the modal navigation controller will receive a release message and in turn release its root view controller (_myViewController).
The retain count of this view controller will hit zero and the memory is then reclaimed.
I have just checked through a couple of my apps, and I am releasing my modal view controllers after each presentation, without problems. Which makes me think that you don't yet understand the Cocoa memory management model. Here's a sample:
TweetController *tweetController = [[TweetController alloc] init];
tweetController.content = content;
tweetController.delegate = self;
[self presentModalViewController:tweetController animated:YES];
[tweetController release];
Note that this controller was created with alloc/init, and wasn't previously released or autoreleased.
In addition, please don't rely on retain count checking; a retain could be from a previous autoreleased, which will go away very soon causing the sort of error you have been seeing.