I want to know how to do this:
I have 3 view controllers and the first and second view controller are connected to the third one !
I want to know how can I write a code that detect from which one I came to this view controller
I have searched here for my answer But all of the similar questions asked about navigation !!!
The Important thing is that I don't have navigation in my app!!
I don't know if my answer will help you in your specific case, but here is the implementation I see from what you are asking. Maybe it will inspire you.
So imagine your are in your homePage or whatever viewController and you want to navigate throw other, but you want to know from which viewController you came from.
-(void)prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender
{
if ([segue.identifier isEqualToString:segue_VC1]) {
CustomViewController1* destinationVC = segue.destinationViewController;
destinationVC.fromSegue = #"I AM VC 1";
}
if ([segue.identifier isEqualToString:segue_VC2]) {
CustomViewController2* destinationVC = segue.destinationViewController;
destinationVC.fromSegue = #"I AM VC 2";
}
}
The more important thing you have to know is that you can access attribute from the destination view controller you will access with your segue.
I know this is in Obj C, but the implementation is still the same.
So that when you navigate from a ViewController to an other one, you can set the attribute of the destinationViewController.
Then when you are in the view controller you wanted to navigate you can check :
if ([_fromSegue isEqualToString: "I AM VC 1"])
// do specific stuff when you come from VC 1
else if ([_fromSegue isEqualToString: "I AM VC 2"])
// do specific stuff when you come from VC 2
else
// other case
There are many ways to do that like simply passing a view controller as a property to the new instance. But in your case it might make more sense to create a static variable which holds the stack of the view controllers the same way the navigation controller does that.
If you are doing this only between the UIViewController subclasses I suggest you to create another subclass of it form which all other view controllers inherit. Let us call it TrackedViewController.
class TrackedViewController : UIViewController {
static var currentViewController: TrackedViewController?
static var previousViewController: TrackedViewController?
override func viewWillAppear(_ animated: Bool) {
super.viewWillAppear(animated)
TrackedViewController.previousViewController = TrackedViewController.currentViewController
TrackedViewController.currentViewController = self
}
}
Now you need to change all the view controllers you want to track so that they all inherit from TrackedViewController as class MyViewController : TrackedViewController {. And that is pretty much it. Now at any point anywhere in your project you can find your current view controller via TrackedViewController.currentViewController and the previous view controller via TrackedViewController.previousViewController. So you can say something like:
if let myController = TrackedViewController.previousViewController as? MyViewController {
// Code here if the screen was reached from MyViewController instance
}
Now the way I did it was through the instance of the view controller which may have some side effects.
The biggest problem you may have is that the previous controller is being retained along with the current view controller. That means you may have 2 controllers in memory you do not need.
If you go from controller A to B to C and back to B then the previous view controller is C, not A. This might be desired result or not.
The system will ignore all other view controllers. So if you use one that is not a subclass of TrackedViewController the call will be ignored: A to B to UITableViewController to C will report that the C was presented by B even though there was another screen in between. Again this might be expected result.
So if the point 2 and 3 are good to you then you should only decide weather to fix the point 1. You may use weak to remove the retaining on the two properties but then you lose the information of the previous view controller if the controller is deallocated. So another choice is to use some identifiers:
class TrackedViewController : UIViewController {
static var currentViewControllerID: String?
static var previousViewControllerID: String?
override func viewWillAppear(_ animated: Bool) {
super.viewWillAppear(animated)
TrackedViewController.previousViewControllerID = TrackedViewController.currentViewControllerID
TrackedViewController.currentViewControllerID = self.screenIdentifier
}
var screenIdentifier: String {
return "Default Screen" // TODO: every view controller must override this method and have unique identifier
}
}
Also you may replace strings with some enumeration or something. Combining them with some associated values could then create quite a powerful tool.
Related
I have login few screens and controllers in my app. First screen is screen with button and moves user to next login view with username, password field and login button. On the controller i have function onClickButton and when i have good data i request to the server with this data.
When server give me callback i have many params about user to set in label in next view.
My structure is like this
Login View -> SecondLogin View and LoginViewController -> TabBarController -> NavigationController -> Table View with TableViewController
My code is
override func prepare(for segue: UIStoryboardSegue, sender: Any?) {
if segue.identifier == "afterLoginView" {
if let secondVC = segue.destination as? TabBarViewController {
secondVC.finalName = self.username
}
}
}
When i want transfer my data directly to tableViewController i have error
Thread 1: signal SIGABRT
I do not understand what I'm doing wrong
You'll need these values in almost all view controllers. Create a singleton class to store the logged in user values like this
class UserDetails: NSObject, Codable {
static let shared = UserDetails()
private override init() {
super.init()
}
var finalName: String?
var otherDetails: String?
}
Now when you receive the response from the login api, assign the values in this singleton class.
UserDetails.shared.finalName = "something"//Name received from server callback
Now you can access these values from any view controller.
class TableViewController: UITableViewController {
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
print(UserDetails.shared.finalName)
}
}
You have some work to do to get to the right view controller. Since your segue is only pointing at the UITabBarViewController, you should put in another guard or if/let statement to get you to the UINavigationController, and then another to finally get you to the UITableViewController, where you can actually refer to your finalName variable.
That would look something like:
if let secondVC = segue.destination as? TabBarViewController {
if let navCon = secondVC.viewController[0] as? UINavigationController {
if let tableVC = navCon.topViewController as? nameOfYourTableVC {
tableVC.finalName = self.username
}
The code is untested, just typed off the top of my head, so please proceed with due caution. Issues such as which tab is the correct NavController would also need to be addressed.
You need to use the actual name of your tableView class in that last if/let. A generic UITableViewController will not include your custom variables.
When server give me callback i have many params about user to set in label in next view.
This is a great example of why you should keep the M in MVC. When you get a response back from the server, store the returned data in your data model. (If you don't have a data model, you should make one.) When a view controller gets some data from the user, such as a user name, it should store that in the model. There's little reason to pass raw data back and forth between view controllers directly... just make sure that all your view controllers have a reference to the model, and have them get and set values there as needed.
This kind of approach will make your code a lot more flexible. It allows view controllers to worry about what they need to do their job, and it gets them out of the business of caring what other view controllers need.
My structure is like this
Login View -> SecondLogin View and LoginViewController -> TabBarController -> NavigationController -> Table View with TableViewController
It might make more sense to load the tab bar controller and then present the login view controller(s) modally. The view controllers that are managed by the tab bar controller can all be set up to refuse to do anything useful until the data they need is present in the data model, and that lets the tab bar controller be the root view controller. That will make it easy to set the model for each of it's child view controllers when the app starts up, and the app can then present the modal login view controllers, also set up with references to the model.
Say I have view controllers A, B, C, D & E all embedded in a navigation controller. In view controller B, I have a custom UIImageView object. In C, I have a custom UITextfield object. Both custom classes have a reference to the view controller for various reasons such as I have to perform things like segue when a user taps the image view. To accomplish this, I have this inside each custom class file:
var controller: UIViewController?
And then inside each view controller, inside viewDidLoad I set that variable to self and everything works as expected (segues on tap etc..)
I have an unwind segue from E back to A. However, I noticed that due to these custom objects in view controllers B & C, both were not being deallocated due to a retain cycle caused by having this reference to the view controller. I fixed the issue by setting the controller variable to nil upon segue, however this creates a problem such that if the user goes back (pops the current view controller), because I set the controller variable to nil upon segue, nothing works (it wont segue again because controller var = nil). I thought I might fix this by adding viewWillAppear code as follows:
override func viewWillAppear(_ animated: Bool) {
usernameTextField.controller = self
passwordTextField.controller = self
}
Because I read that viewWillAppear will be called each time the viewcontroller comes into view. This did not fix the problem.
Any ideas on how to go about this? How can I set the controllers to nil during the unwind maybe...?
As the other answers have said you need to make it a weak reference like this:
weak var controller: UIViewControler?
However I would go further and say that you should not be keeping a reference to to a UIViewController inside any UIView based object (UIImageView, UITextField, etc). The UIViews should not need to know anything about their UIViewControllers.
Instead you should be using a delegation pattern. This is a basic example:
1) Create a protocol for the custom UIImageField like this:
protocol MyImageFieldProtocol: class {
func imageTapped()
}
2) Then add a delegate like this:
weak var delegate: MyImageFieldProtocol?
3) Your UIViewController then conforms to the protocol like this:
class MyViewController: UIViewController, MyImageFieldProtocol {
}
4) Somewhere inside the view controller (viewDidLoad is usually a good place you assign the view controller to the image views delegate like this:
func viewDidLoad {
super.viewDidLoad()
myImageView.delegate = self
}
5) Then add the function to respond to the protocol action to the view controller like this:
func imageTapped {
self.performSegue(withIdentifier: "MySegue", sender: nil)
}
var controller: UIViewController? should be a weak reference. Like this:
weak var controller: UIViewController?
To know more about that read about Resolving Strong Reference Cycles Between Class Instances in Swift's documentation.
You should use weak references when you keep some ViewControllers
weak var controller: UIviewControler?
You should check everything link to retain cycle, and referencing in swift :
https://krakendev.io/blog/weak-and-unowned-references-in-swift
https://medium.com/#chris_dus/strong-weak-unowned-reference-counting-in-swift-5813fa454f30
I had similar issues, I advice you to look at those link : How can I manage and free memory through ViewControllers
The issue I'm having is this.
I have a navigation controller with 3 viewController. In the 1st controller, I have the user select an image. This image is passed to 2nd and 3rd controller via prepareForSegue.
At the 3rd controller, I have a button that takes the user back to the 1st view controller. I explored 2 ways in doing this:
1) use performSegue, but I don't like this because it just push the 1st controller to my navigation stack. So I have this weird "Back" button at the 1st Viewcontroller now, which is not what I want. I want the app to take user directly to 1st viewcontroller without the back button.
2) I tried Poptorootviewcontroller. This solves the issue of the "back" button. But, when I pop back to the 1st viewcontroller, the user's selected image is still on screen. I want to clear this image when the user goes from the 3rd viewcontroller back to the 1st viewcontroller.
So with approach 2), how do I make sure all memory is refreshed and the image becomes nil in the 1st viewcontroller? Since I'm not using performSegue, 3rd viewcontroller does not have access to the 1st Viewcontroller.
For refresh, you'd have to clear it in viewWillAppear but I find this rather dangerous. Best you can do there is to create a new copy of the view controller everytime and Swift will take care of the rest. I don't know if you are using the storyboard but I would recommend using the class UIStoryboard and the function instiantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier("something") as! YourCustomVC
As long as you stay in the navigation stack, you'll not lose any of the current configurations of previous View Controllers.
As for passing data back to the first controller. You can either just throw it in the global scope which is the easiest way but might be difficult to know when it was updated or if the data is fresh. But you can always just:
var something: String = ""
class someView: UIViewController {
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
something = "foo"
}
}
Something will be availabe everywhere then.
You could make a protocol and pass the delegate along the 3 view controllers. So when you are starting it you could do:
func someAction() {
let v = SomeViewController()
v.delegate = self
self.navigationController?.pushViewController(v, animated: true)
}
And then with each following view:
func someOtherAction() {
let v = SomeOtherViewController()
v.delegate = self.delegate
self.navigationController?.pushViewController(v, animated: true)
}
Although personally I find it hard to keep track of this.
Lastly you could use the NSNotificationCenter to pass an object along with all the data and catch it in a function on your first controller.
To do this you first register your VC for the action in viewDidLoad() or something:
NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserver(self, selector: "someAction:", name: "someNotification", object: nil)
Then when you are done in the 3rd view make some object or a collection of string and send it back as follows:
NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().postNotificationName("someNotification", object: CustomObject())
And then lastly you'll catch it in the function "someAction"
func someAction(note: NSNotification) {
if let object = note.object as? CustomObject {
//Do something with it
}
}
Hope this helps!
Use an unwind segue which provides the functionality to unwind from the 3rd to the 1st (root) view controller.
The unwind segue is tied to an action in the root view controller. Within this action, you simply nil the image:
#IBAction func unwindToRootViewController(sender: UIStoryboardSegue)
{
let sourceViewController = sender.sourceViewController
// Pull any data from the view controller which initiated the unwind segue.
// Nil the selected image
myImageView.image = nil
}
As you can see in the action, segues also let you pass data back from the source view controller. This is a much simpler approach than needing to resort to using delegates, notifications, or global variables.
It also helps keep things encapsulated, as the third view controller should never need to know specifics about a parent view controller, or try to nil any image that belongs to another view controller.
In general, you pass details to a controller, which then acts on it itself, instead of trying to manipulate another controller's internals.
I'm trying to make an app that uses three containers to show different content, but I'm having trouble communicating between the containers. I succeeded to use a segue to send some information at the tap of a button in one container to another container, but part of this information also has to be relayed to the third container. For this I wanted to use a delegate, but I cannot reference the right ViewController to the delegate variable.
So what I want goes as follows:
CollectionViewCell tapped, triggering segue to TableVC
TableVC receives information and updates the table
TableVC triggers delegate function in third VC
Third VC takes in some info and updates view
In the above I have managed to get 1 and 2 to work, but got stuck at 3.
I have made my protocol as follows:
protocol PurchaseDelegate {
func addToTotalAmount(product : Product)
}
In the TableVC I have declared var delegate : PurchaseDelegate? = nil and in the IBAction triggered from the segue: delegate?.addToTotalAmount(product)
In the third VC I have implemented the delegate as follows:
class thirdVC:UIViewController,PurchaseDelegate {
func addToTotalAmount(product : Product) {
println("Adding....")
}
}
All three containers are within a main VC that does some initial stuff in the application.
My problem is, that I don't know how to get a reference from thirdVC to my delegate variable in my tableVC.
Thanks in advance.
I ended up finding the solution to the problem after a bit further searching with inspiration from #Anna Dickinson.
Firstly, the containers must be ordered correctly in the storyboard. The container whose view controller implements the delegate protocol must be first in the list and then the other view controller further down.
Then, in the main view controller - the view controller for the view with the containers - the prepareForSegue function is implemented, since it will be triggered as the containers are initialized.
This all of the code remains as above, but the main view controller will be something like the following:
class MainViewController: UIViewController {
var actionVC : FirstViewController! // This is the one, that implements the delegate protocol
var tableVC : SecondViewController! // This is the one, that has a delegate variable
override func prepareForSegue(segue: UIStoryboardSegue, sender: AnyObject?) {
if(segue.identifier == "firstVC"){
self.actionVC = segue.destinationViewController as FirstViewController
} else if(segue.identifier == "secondVC"){
self.tableVC = segue.destinationViewController as SecondViewController
self.tableVC.delegate = self.actionVC
}
}
}
I'm not sure if the is the right, nor the best way to do this, but it works perfectly for what I need.
I have a complex iPad view that I manage by having several view controllers. I previously (before iOS6/Xcode 4.5) did this by allocating my view controllers in code, and hooked up the various views to them though links to the master view.
What I would like to do is use the new UIContainerView container views to embed the view controllers in the storyboard file. I don't seem to be able to make an IBOutlet link to the embedded view controller to the master controller.
Is it possible to do this? Or to retrieve the embedded controller via a tag or something in the code?
This question is SPECIFICALLY about using container views
Another option for some cases is to capture the embedded controller using -prepareForSegue:sender:.
For example, if I have a UINavigationController embedded within a CustomContainerViewController, I can name the embed segue embedContentStack in the storyboard and capture it in CustomContainerViewController via
- (void)prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender {
if ([segue.identifier isEqualToString:#"embedContentStack"]) {
// can't assign the view controller from an embed segue via the storyboard, so capture here
_contentStack = (UINavigationController *)segue.destinationViewController;
}
}
I'm not sure what you mean by "retrieve the embedded controller". When you want to use a controller you use the UIStoryboard method instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:, using the identifier that you give to the controller in IB. You can also use the performSegueWithIdentifier:sender: method (which also instantiated the view controller). You should check out the "Using View Controllers in Your App" section in the Apple docs. It also makes reference to the fact that child view controllers are instantiated at the same time as the container controller.
After edit: If you embed a container view in another view controller, that embedded view's controller can be referenced from the containing controller with self.childViewControllers (which will be an array, so if there is just one, you can get it with lastObject).
Here is another thread about it: Access Container View Controller from Parent iOS
They propose to keep a reference in prepareForSegue or search for the embedded viewController in self.childViewControllers
Note of Caution
Before proceeding to use an answer to this question, you may wish to reflect whether the embedded things really need to be view controllers.
Eg, if you're embedding a UICollectionViewController subclass, could you instead embed a UICollectionView subclass? Or, even better, could you embed a UIView subclass that hides away the UICollectionView behind a simple ViewModel?
In the code base I'm currently working on, I'm embedding two view controllers in to another view controller. Both could fairly easily be plain views instead, and could then be more easily bound to in the storyboard, without this messy code.
Unfortunately, they are currently view controllers and I'm not in a position to simplify them in to plain views right now, so this will have to do.
Background
I'm using the approach of picking up the embed segue in prepare(for segue:, sender:) as suggested by Playful Geek here.
I wanted to show the swift I'm using for this, as it seems to be fairly tidy…
class EditionLandingViewController: UIViewController {
fileprivate var titlesView: SectionTitlesViewController!
fileprivate var sectionsView: SectionsViewController!
}
//MARK:-
extension EditionLandingViewController {
private enum SegueId: String {
case embedTitles
case embedSections
}
override func prepare(for segue: UIStoryboardSegue, sender: Any?) {
super.prepare(for: segue, sender: sender)
guard
let segueRawId = segue.identifier,
let segueId = SegueId(rawValue: segueRawId)
else { return }
switch segueId {
case .embedTitles:
self.titlesView = segue.destination as! SectionTitlesViewController
case .embedSections:
self.sectionsView = segue.destination as! SectionsViewController
}
}
}
Discussion
I've chosen to name segues as action methods.
Using an enum cases for segue identifiers means you've got the compiler and tooling on your side, so its much harder to get a segue name wrong.
Keeping the segue ids in a private enum within the extension scope seems appropriate in this case as these segues are not needed anywhere else (they can't be performed, for example).
I'm using implicitly unwrapped types for the embedded view controllers because (in my case anyway) it's a logic error if they are missing.
Similarly, I'm also happy to force cast the destination view controller types. Again, it would be a logic error if these types are not the same.
Swift version of the top-voted Answer. Years later, Interface Builder still does not seem to support dragging IBOutlets to embedded Container Views.
Instead, set the outlets in prepare(for:sender:):
#IBOutlet var someViewController: SomeViewController!
override func prepare(for segue: UIStoryboardSegue, sender: Any?) {
if segue.identifier == "EmbedSomeViewController", let destination = segue.destination as? SomeViewController {
someViewController = destination
}
}
You must also set up the UIContainerView on your Storyboard. Xcode will generate an embed segue automatically; set the segue's Identifier.