superview and parentviewcontroller nil after adding a subview - iphone

Question

I think I'm missing something fundamental and so I want to ask the community for some help. I'm building an app based around a basic iPhone Utility Application. My MainView and FlipsideView share some elements so I have created separate ViewControllers and nib files for those pieces. In order to do this I have done the following:
1. Created a viewcontroller called searchDateViewController which is the file's owner of searchDateView.xib
2. searchDateView.xib is basically a UIView with a UILabel inside, the view is wired up correctly
3. Inside both MainViewController.m and FlipsideViewController.m I add a subview as folllows:
- (void)loadView{
[super loadView];
searchDateViewController = [[SearchDateViewController alloc] initWithNibName:#"SearchDateView" bundle:nil];
[[searchDateViewController view] setFrame:[searchDateView frame]];
[[self view] addSubview:[searchDateViewController view]];
...
}
Everything displays and works just fine. Basically depending on actions that happen in each of the main and flipside views the UILabel of the nib is changed. However, I wanted to do something slightly different if the searchDateViewController is loaded from the MainView or the FlipsideView. However, I can't seem to figure out which ViewController is adding the searchDateViewController subview.
In searchDateViewController I tried:
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
NSLog(#"superview %#", self.view.superview);
NSLog(#"parentviewcontroller %#", self.parentViewController);
}
In both cases I get nil.
So my question is - can I find out which ViewController is adding searchDateViewController a a subview? If so how? Or if my logic here is completely messed up, how should I be doing this?
Thanks!

Answer 1

viewDidLoad is invoked when the view controller has loaded its view. In your case, that happends in this line:
[[searchDateViewController view] setFrame:[searchDateView frame]];
At that moment, you haven't yet called addSubview: so it is no wonder the view's superview is nil.
To solve your problem, you should define a property inside SearchDateViewController to distinguish between the different cases. This property would then be set accordingly by the parent controller that creates the SearchDateViewController instance.
Generally, I do not think it is a good idea to use a UIViewController subclass as a controller for a view that is used as a subview of one or several fullscreen views rather than be used as a fullscreen view itself. Much of UIViewController's logic works on the assumption that it is used to manage a fullscreen view. For instance, with your design, I think it's possible that SearchDateViewController will modify the view's frame when the device orientation changes etc. Since you don't need all this functionality for a non-fullscreen subview, I suggest you subclass your SearchDateViewController directly from NSObject.

Answer 2

ViewController and views are completely separate.
In most cases, when you add a subview to a parent view you don't add its controller to the parent's viewController. The exception to this rule is the navigation controller which adds the controller instead of the view to maintain a hierarchy of view controllers.
Your SearchDate viewController can't find a parent controller because you never assigned one and the system does not do it automatically. You can just assign a parent controller when you evoke the view from another controller.
searchDateViewController.parentController=self;