Fixed Navigation Bar For Different View Controllers - ios

Question

I am trying to implement a navigation bar whose contents persist between different view controllers. For example, I have the following functionality right now:
Non Persistent Navigation Bar
I have set an imageView as the titleView of the navigation bar.
The titleView of the navigation bar transitions along with the view controller here (the image shows some animations by fading in and out). But I would like it to stay hooked onto the top of every screen without any transitions. This would mean that only the part of the view below the navigation bar would show the transition from one view controller to another.
Is that possible in Swift?

Answer 1

Yea that is possible. What you can do is have a container view controller, which can have your navigation bar along with a content view controller.
Now each time you open a new VC, push the new VC on the containerVC's contentVC.
For ex:
let containerVC = self.parentViewController?.containerViewController()
if let _ = containerVC {
containerVC.pushContentViewController(newViewController)
}
Attaching layout screenshot for more understanding.
So if you check here, the Root Container is the view where you can add your new VC as a child VC.

Answer 2

You can do this by changing your UIViewController hierarchy. For this you'll need three view controllers. First will own your UINavigationBar and UIView where other two UIViewController's views will live.
Let's call one with the navigation bar MasterViewController, and other two—ViewControllerA, ViewControllerB respectively.
Somewhere in MasterViewController instantiate child view controllers and add them to your view controller hierarchy. For simplicity's sake let's do everything in viewDidLoad() but you can do do this anywhere you deem it necessary. You could even load view controllers lazily as user demands them.
final class ViewControllerA: UIViewController { }
final class ViewControllerB: UIViewController { }
final class MasterViewController: UIViewController {
var navigationBar = UINavigationBar()
override func viewDidLoad() {
view.addSubview(navigationBar)
let a = ViewControllerA()
let b = ViewControllerB()
addChildViewController(a)
addChildViewController(b)
view.addSubview(a.view)
// you are ready for transitions from a.view to b.view when necessary
}
}
Now you can do transitions from a.view to b.view (and back) and it will affect nothing in master view (which has the navigationBar).
It is important to note that view hierarchy and view controller hierarchy are not liked in any way and you are responsible for managing both.