I have built an application that revolves around UITableView, Core Data and XML. Now that the app is almost complete i want to add a main menu before accessing the tableView. The main menu will then allow you to navigate to the table and other functions. What is the easiest way to go about doing this? I'm confused about how to change the inital file that is loaded.
One suggestion would be to add a navigation controller and a new view which will serve as your 'main' view and show your menu. Then in response to the 'menu' choices you could push your existing table view or other views that you might want to show.
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i am struggling to add a side menu to my already existing app.
i've read all kinds of tutorials, but almost each and everyone of them uses a container ViewController, which I'd try to avoid to use..
I got a single page app, with thousand of code rows, embedded into a navigation controller (for a additional settings page)
I've added a UIBarbuttonItem on the top left to toggle the visibility of the menu.
now I created the side menu in a different ViewController on the Storyboard / InterfaceBuilder, and just can't find a way to easily slide that ViewController in from the left side.
one approach was to create single view behind my app and push the main view aside to reveal that view, but the result was not as sexy as I wanted it to be, and designing a view in the background of another view would not be that easy to work with too...
I'd just use a container View Controller if I absolutly have to, and I don't want to use any cocoa pods...
does anyone know how to proceed? any push in the right direction'd be greatly appreciated!
I have a customer view controller that is a subclass of UITableViewController. It has a list that lists all the customers. I have a + button in the top right. I want to make it so when people click the + it will go to the add customer screen and after you click save it will act JUST like the iphone contacts list and then display the newly added customer.
Would I need to create a controller for each view? One to display the list, one to add the person and one to view the contact then another to edit the contact? Or should I use one controller and just add a bunch of views in IB into the single view controller?
Create a CustomerListController for seeing ALL customers.
Create a CustomerViewController for viewing and editing the detail.
Subclass the CustomerViewController calling it CustomerAddController for creating, as this will need a little more functionality.
Core Data Recipes application will give you some good pointers around this.
If you want it to only create the record after you hit save, you'll need to:
Create an additional NSManagedObjectContext, assuming you're using Core Data.
Pass that context to the instance of the CustomerAddController class only (not needed for the view class).
When the Save button is hit, you'll need to merge the two NSManagedObjectContext classes in the CustomerListController.
I believe the way the Contacts app does it is:
Contacts list is a UITableViewController in a UINavigationController
Touching the + modally presents (from the navigation controller) a different view controller for adding the contact
Touching Done pushes a new view controller onto the navigation controller for viewing the newly created contact, but it isn't visible yet because the modally presented contact adding view controller is on top. Immediately afterwards, the modal view controller is dismissed, revealing the newly created contact.
To answer your question, I'd suggest using three different view controllers, just like the Contacts app.
I suggest you to use different views for every task because using one IB file uses more memory where as if you use different IBs and view controllers for every task then there is not too much memory is used and after completing one task for example when you save the user detail free the memory for that view so that you app do not use much memory.
I'm in the process of learning and designing an app for our company. At its heart, it has a list of "alarms" which when clicked on, goes to a more detailed view with a toolbar to perform tasks upon that "alarm".
I'm having a devil of a time working out how to structure this application. I have something that works currently (i'll explain it in a sec), but now I'm about to hook up the data source for the table and I'm getting myself lost.
At the main screen, there is to be a list of "alarms". This list should be able to be filtered with 3 categories (All, Category 1, Category 2) where the categories are subsets of all the "alarms". I've implemented this using a TabBarController.
Within each tab, I've got a NavigationController (to handle the navigation of between the list and the details) and it's main view is a custom UITableViewController that contains the custom table view.
As described, when you click a item, it navigates to a detailed view. This is all currently working but I'm concerned about the structure.
It's pretty obvious that I have a fair bit of duplication with the 3 different NavigationControllers, but I've read that subclassing the NavigationController is not recommened.
My questions are:
Is there a better way to structure this application? Is there a better filtering method (thats quick and easy) instead of a TabBar?
Where should the tableview datasource go? Most examples I've seen have it being created in the AppDelegate and then passed directly to the tableviewcontroller. My custom tabelviewcontroller is a couple of levels down the controller chain, how do I pass the datasource to it, or can I make the datasource "static"?
I hope that all made sense
Sounds as though you want one navigation controller and table view controller with a segmented control at the top to switch between the different data views. For an example of this kind of layout have a look at how the App Store app works when you select the Featured tab - it has a segmented control to switch between New, What's Hot and Genius.
In my application I am parsing XML to create a UITableView. When a user selects a row it changes the file that it is parsing and reloads the UITableView.
I want to create a back button so that the user can go back the the previous XML page they were viewing.
In short how can I tell the navigation controller to create a back arrow for this page when all i am doing is reloading my UITableView?
I'd strongly suggest building another controller (i.e. UITableViewController) and push that instead of just reloading the table. This makes the button automagically, and (major plus here), it animates the whole digging down / stepping back in a way that the user is expecting it.
As a side note, I didn't manage to get a back-style button once I tried it, just a plain normal button (make a new button and set it at the navigation bar).
What you're describing is a navigation. Rather than reloading the table's data, simply push a new view controller onto the navigation stack every time a row is tapped. This is a fundamental pattern in iPhone development. Here is Apple sample code for a multi-level drill down table view.
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.