Situation:
I have an Xcode project based on the "Navigation-Based-Application" template. So that means I have a SINGLE UINavigationController that manages a UIViewController.
What I want To Do:
What I want to do is add one more UINavigationController to my project -- and be able to switch back and forth between them. (I want to do this to make space for some seperate unrelated content so that it does not have a back button pointing back to the root view controller.)
Question:
How do I add one more UINavigationController to my project and switch between the two UINavigationControllers?
The most common, and natural iPhone OS, way of doing this is to add a UITabBarController to your application. The Xcode template Tab Bar Application will guide you in the right direction on how to use it.
But...
If you don't like to have a Tab Bar in your application, and wish to switch between different UINavigationController instances (or any UIViewController for that matter), you can do something like this.
First you need to create your UINavigationController instances in a appropriate place (for example a new view controller, or in you Application Delegate, if you want to take the easy way out). You can then switch between controllers by just swapping which Navigation Controller's view that should be visible.
Example in the Application Delegate, "firstNavigationController" and "secondNavigationController" are UINavigationController instance variables:
- (void)showFirstNavigationController {
[secondNavigationController.view removeFromSuperview];
[self.window addSubview:firstNavigationController.view];
}
This will simply display the first instead of the second Navigation Controller. Note that this example is very simple. I didn't take into consideration that you should correctly handle the methods viewWillAppear:, viewDidAppear: and so on.
Related
I have implemented Facebook type left Slide Bar layout in my first view of iphone app. Now, I want to implement this throughout all view controllers (screens) in application, means irrespective of the view the left slide bar should appear on clicking the menu button at the top in all views.
My app contains 25-30 viewcontrollers and my slide bar layout should appear in all views..
Can anyone suggest, how can I include above FB Layout in all views
Thanks in advance
Ramu
Simple, The one view controller in which you have implemented the FB layout and is working. Make it the base class on top of UIViewController. And as for the rest of all the ViewControllers, inherit them from the MasterClass that you just created. Doing this will make the swipe gesture that brings forth the slide bar available to all of your 30 view controllers.
EDIT
Lets see, we have UIViewController, now first of all you create a UIViewController's subclass: say FBViewController ..In this FBViewController you implement the FBLayout such that the swipe and all is working ..on it ..test your app first using only this FBViewController as rootViewController and check all the functionalities.Once everything is working fine, grow on it. What I mean is this.
Say you are creating a Tabbed application, where all the three tabs are supposed to have the same FBLayout style. Then do these steps.
Create FBViewController, it inherits from UIViewController (using UIViewController subclass template, also check the generate XIB button) also have an XIB for it FBViewController.XIB (fully implement FBLayout in it. This will be your base class)
Then Create three more ViewController classes (FirstViewController, SecondViewController, ThirdViewController) again from the UIViewController subclass template, but for these three dont check the generate XIB button. these three will use the XIB of the base class FBViewController (If you are wondering how, then go to step 3 :))
Go to header file of FirstViewController class you created, there you can see #interface FirstViewController: UIViewController replace it with #interface FirstViewController: FBViewController, but before it import FBViewController.h to the header file. Repeat the same for the Other two classes- SecondViewController, ThirdViewController. Since these three will inherit from FBViewController. In their viewDidLoad [super viewDidLoad] will load FBViewController and generate the view. after [super viewDidLoad]; line you can implement ur own methods.
In the three classes just change the initWithNibName method to change the tab bar name and title.
In appDelegate go to didFinishLaunching method and put these three view controller in a tabBarController, set the tabBarController as rootViewController.
And we are done. If your FBViewController is working fine. You will see that all the three classes behave the same way. Thanx to the power of Inheritance.
Cheers, play a bit, have fun.
I had the same problem. I was using a facebook-style menu, and needed it in all view controllers.
You can use a Container Controller. A Container Controller can have the base layout, which I defined in a nib, containing a navigation bar and a bar button item to toggle the menu, and then add child view controllers and remove them as you need them. That way, you can throw whatever view controller you need to the container controller and it will display it.
You can also add gesture control to slide open/close the menu easily.
You will have to make the Container controller your self, it is not standard. I think it is better solution than inheritance, since if you use inheritance you can't make a for example UITableViewController, all your controllers will be of the type of yuor master class. Of course, you can fix this anyway with delegates.
It may sound a bit tricky, but see this tutorial which I used: http://www.cocoanetics.com/2012/04/containing-viewcontrollers/
It wasn't accutally that hard.
EDIT: You can just use a UINavigationController as well. Just set the base view controller to the view controller you want to display, and you can prevent it adding the back button etc to the nav bar by overriding the default methods. Make a UINavigationController as rootNavigationController. Might be simpler.
I'd highly recommend using an open source solution that handles all the edge cases for you - it's both the easiest, most robust and most maintainable (since the community will keep it up to date fro you). ViewDeck seems to be the most popular solution though I have also had success with PPRevealSideViewController. They both provide a very robust implementation that would take a long time to do yourself (e.g. you can optionally enable swipe on the navigation bar or even content area to open the menu). Furthermore they separate the sliding logic and the revealed menu (which can be any view controller you like, but most likely a table view controller) out of your other view controllers. That way any viewcontroller can have a side menu without duplicating any code - separation of concern is great :)
You can make a SharedInstance for SideView class. I am doing same thing for iAD to show throught-out the application.
Please see the the link of iAdSuite ,In which the BannerViewController is SharedInstance so they are easily used for all View Controller
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#samplecode/iAdSuite/Listings/TabbedBanner_TabbedBanner_BannerViewController_m.html
In a navigation based application, when I want to create and use other uiviews and uitableviews I need to create their controller and views. in an example I saw that I can simply create a new controller with .xib file, design it, and just call that xib file from my navigationcontroller.
In another example, some stuff was going on also in the mainwindow.xib and some new controllers and navigation items were added from the mainwindow.xib.
What is the difference between these methods? when and why I should need to open and edit the mainwindow.xib file to add a controller?
The mainwindow.xib is your UIWindow component which you can see as a representation of your iphone screen, it will always be there no matter what. In your examples when you are showing your view controller dirrctly that is because the controller is already a subview of your UIWindow which is the mainwindow.xib in the Interface Builder.
There really is no difference between the 2 methods, in the first one you are adding your controller as a subview progrmatically using:
[window addsubview:mynavcontroller]
And in the second one youbare doing it thru interface builder, you may use whichever method you feel more comfortable with.
You do not really need a controller to show a view, however they can be handy if you want to do any extra stuff such as rotating your view or loading certain data when the view is loading. That being said you could add your view as a subview of your window and it would still work.
Suppose I have tested a navigation controller at the root level.
- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application
{
self.window.rootViewController = self.navController; //iOS4
}
Now I want to move it into one tab inside a tab controller (in a larger app). I feel I should be able to do an equivalent to the above:
self.rootViewController = self.navController; //pseudocode
inside say
- (void)viewDidLoad
just dropping the code in. What in fact is the correct/elegant way to go about this? Often books refer to the root controller of a controller, and I'm wondering how to access it as I can the one of the window. (It's possible my understanding of this is misplaced of course).
Revised answer:
You can indeed insert your main UIViewController's view elsewhere in the UI as desired.
The trick is to do it early enough, and/or in the correct fashion. viewDidLoad isn't the correct place -- by the time that method is called, you usually want your main UIViewController implementation(s) to be in place.
There are two very good places to do this sort of UI setting up:
1) Via interface builder (nib files)
2) By implementing loadView in your UIViewController (do read the Apple docs -- very good info there).
It's one or the other, don't try do both at the same time for one UIViewController!
So in your example, you could use interface builder to edit a nib containing a tab bar controller. Drag in a plain UIViewController as a child of the tab controller, and then edit the 'Class' property of the UIViewController to MySpecialViewController (i.e. your subclass of UIViewController). And that's it, your nib now causes your view controller to be added to the UI inside a tab.
To taking approach 2), you'd want to set the viewControllers property of the UITabBarController in your loadView method of the UIViewController that contains the tab bar controller UI.
(My original answer below)
There isn't a consistently named way to access the root view controller(s) across Apple's provided view controllers (such as UINavigationController etc.). But the docs give you the info about how to access them; e.g. the UINavigationController has a property called viewControllers which you can access.
Ripping out existing view controllers willy-nilly and inserting them in different places in your UI is really not a very good idea. You could end up with all kinds of grief if you go down that round (e.g. device orientation changes). It's not the sort of approach Apple want you to take.
A better approach is to have several different instances of the view controller you want in different places. If they need access to the same data, they share the same data source. But they're individual, different instances.
I have problem concerning viewcontrollers. I have done some iphone games with just one
viewcontroller, but now I want to use several.
I have a MainViewController that creates two viewcontrollers called StageViewController (where the gameplay takes place) and a MenuViewController (where you select the stage you want to play).
My MenuViewController creates buttons from a custom button-class based on UIImageView. And this works fine. The problem is that when I press a button in the Menu I want to call a method in the MainViewController that inactivates the MenuViewController and activates the StageViewController.
What is the best way to do this? I don't want to use Interface Builder, just code.
did you read View Controller Programming Guide for iOS?
If not do so now, especially the section about Navigation Controllers
I am sure this is very simple, yet I am stuck...
I have created an application and added UITabViewController (dragged in from the library in Interface Builder. My application has 3 different views, clicking on appropriate tab brings the different view. So far so good.
I want to convert one of the views to be a UINavigationController: basically a table with the option to delete rows (so UINavigationController would need to have a button "Edit" on top).
I saw many samples which would do either 1 or 2, but not both.
How would I combine it, keeping in mind that I have used provided UITabViewController and did not added UITabBar directly to the view.
Thanks
If you are using Interface Builder, you should be able to just drag and drop a navigation controller into your tab bar controller as a child controller. The next tab bar item should be generated for it automatically from that.
You can also do this programatically by just creating however many UINavigationControllers you need in an array and assigning that to the uitabbarcontroller appropriately.
I actually don't like this method of combining the UINavigationController and UITabBarController since the tab bar controller must always be visible, which can be really confusing sometimes.
Instead, I recommend you make your own custom UITabBarController (Tab bar controller inside a navigation controller, or sharing a navigation root view) which you add to the navigation controller. I personally don't know why Apple didn't do this; hopefully this is the standard way in 4.0 :)