I'm using Xcode 8 and working on a legacy .xib file and need to figure out how to programmatically move all the objects. Questions:
How can I programmatically reference the view (pointed to by the red arrow)?
Assuming I can reference the view, would programmatically moving it also relatively move the four buttons and label contained within it?
Here's a screen shot of the View hierarchy of the .xib file:
Normally, I would just create a UIView object in a separate .xib file with the contents of the view from question #1, and add it the .xib file referenced above but this is existing code and I want to minimize changes if possible.
Assuming you have a view controller for this story board, Option+click your source file to open it in the assistant editor. You CTRL+Drag from the document outline (where your arrow is pointing) to the spot in your source file where you want the outlet to appear and Xcode will create an IBOutlet for the view.
If your question is can you load just the view from the story board without the view controller. I suppose you could instantiate the view controller, take a strong reference to the view, remove the view from its superview and then trash the viewcontroller, but that seems a bit wasteful; in this instance I would copy and paste the view into its own nib.
Note that as far as moving the view, yes it will move all of its subviews. If this is a temporary animation kind of thing consider using the .transform property along with one of the UIView Animation methods. You can also CTRL+Drag the constraints from interface builder and manipulate the constraints in code. You should avoid setting the frame/center manually if you are using constraints otherwise autolayout will be fighting with you.
Related
I am having a hard time understanding why you can put UIViews outside the UIViewController on the storyboard, and what the use case of it might be.
For instance, on the storyboard I can add UIToolbar, UIAcitivtyIndicator and UIProgressView that is outside of the UIViewController. Is this mean there is a way for you to reference those Views that are outside UIViewController and potentially display them somehow either programmatically or embed those like you would do with a ContainerView?
Yes, it absolutely is possible to do what you're describing!
When you add objects that are outside the view controller, they appear in what Apple calls the "Scene Dock". Apple has the following suggested usage for the scene dock:
If a view is not part of the main view hierarchy — such as a pop-up
menu — add the view to the scene dock. In a running app, the system adds
and removes these kind of views from the view hierarchy when they are
opened and closed.
The steps to make this work are below:
Open the storyboard.
Open the utilities area for the workspace window by clicking the
utilities button in the
toolbar.
In the utilities area, select the Object library by clicking the Object Library button in the library bar.
On the storyboard, select the scene to which you will add the extra view.
Drag a view class object from the object library into the the scene dock.
And importantly...
The added view is a part of the view controller. It will be
instantiated along with the rest of the views. You can attach the view
to a property of the view controller that has an IBOutlet. You can add
more than one view to the scene dock.
(These steps were originally copied from here - unfortunately this page seems to have been deleted by Apple at some point).
I have a UIViewController with a UITableView that is fed with data from the local database. When the user first launches the app (after installing) the table view is empty and I display a UIView in the middle of the table view that contains a UIImage, a UILabel and a UIButton (a call to action).
The first version of this view I built programmatically, which was no good to me because every time I tweaked something I had to build the app again. Then I switched to the storyboard but had to drag a UIView to the middle of my tableView. It is working now but I don't like the way it is, I can't edit my table view cells without having to move the UIView out of the table view.
I'd like to have a way to build this view entirely separated from my tableView (or even from my view controller in question) and then reference it in the viewDidLoad call of my view controller.
Unfortunately Xcode does not allow us to drag views directly to the storyboard so I'm pretty lost here.
Please tell me if I haven't been clear enough. I appreciate any help you could give me.
UPDATE: It'd be particularly awesome to me if I could also create a custom Swift class for this view of mine and reference it in the storyboard. And then in my viewDidLoad I could simply instantiate my custom view.
Thanks in advance.
Create a XIB file in which you can drag a view (without a view controller).
In your code you can load the XIB using NSBundle.mainBundle().loadNibNamed("MyXibName", owner:self, options:nil).
In the XIB file you can give the UIView a custom class (like you can do with view controllers in storyboard).
You then of course have to retrieve the view from the array returned by loadNibNamed and cast it to your custom class.
I'm sorry but i'm still a bit dumb in UIViews and creating a custom one.
I have a custom view and a xib file that are connected through the XIB IB.
I want to add this view to the storyboard.
What you see in this picture is an empty view which i've connected to the custom view class
When launching the app - i see the exact same view without my custom view being loaded.. what am i missing ?
It is not enough to just link your xib view to the storyboard through the view class name. You should copy the view from your xib (open your xib, select the root view and copy) to your storyboard view controller (select the parent view and paste). You can even open (double tap the xib file in the navigator) your xib in a new window and do a drag drop to the story board. Note that all the property wirings and constrains that you had defined in the xib will be retained when you copy paste your view from xib file.
The answer is actually pretty simple.
I had a recursive init process - meaning that although i did over initWithCoder method, in the xib file, i've set the view class to be my class.
What i should have done is to make my xib file's owner to be my class instead.
And then all the loadFromNibName worked perfectly in my initWithCoder!
How should I go about creating a View for the storyboard programmatically? I want to access the labels from the first ViewController object made(automatically to call the IBAction methods of VC). I know that this first object of VC is the one linked to the view in the storyboard(?) and I need to change a label form another file, besides VC. I'm pretty sure the only way to do so would be to access the VC object that is linked to the view, or create one and not go with the default one that is created. If not, how would I go about accessing the labels of the view from another file?
You don't create storyboard objects programmatically. A storyboard is very basically an XML file Xcode uses to call different view controllers. The biggest advantage of using storyboards over NIBs is you can layout transitions or segues, and the advantage of NIBs or storyboards over initiating view controllers by code is obviously the visual interface. So your question doesn't really make sense.
If you want to reference a particular view controller's label from your storyboard you need to create a pointer to that view controller first, but changing it programmatically doesn't make sense because that's what storyboard is for.
That said you may just need to go look for your class name in your view controller's Identity Inspector in storyboard and then edit your label programmatically through an IBOutlet property.
When a view controller (VC) has hordes of views and subviews it becomes very difficult to modify a subview because I can't even see it completely (it is hidden behind some other subview). For example please have a look at current state of one of my VC:
I can't see highlighted "Congratulations - UILabel" or its UIView.
Is there a way I can see a specific view clearly (may be at the top of all the other views)?
Generally I drag drop a UIView on a different dummy blank VC, design view completely on that VC with all constraints and finally drag drop it back to my actual VC. This works most of the times but it seems like an inefficient approach to me.
I've observed that seeing overlapping views used to be easier in iOS6 but it is Very difficult in iOS7. Is there any feature in iOS7 Interface Builder that I am missing? Thanks for your precious time.
Update: Would Spark Inspector help me here? I am newbie to development so don't want to waste my time trying and understanding new plugin if it doesn't help me achieve what I want. Thanks.
This is widely considered one of the weak points of Xcode's new Storyboards feature. They're great for apps that require a large number of simple controllers, but they become difficult to work with when your interfaces get complicated. Most experienced developers use Storyboards in some places and individual controller XIBs in others, depending on what they're building.
Here's how to solve your problem:
Step 1. Break the View Controller out of your Storyboard into it's own XIB
From the File menu, choose New File and choose an Empty XIB file (from the User Interface section). Name it "YourExactVCClassName.xib".
Go to your Storyboard. Copy the entire View of your View Controller and then delete it.
Paste the View Controller into your new XIB. Change the class of "File's Owner" to be your View Controller, and set it's "view" property by drawing an outlet from the view to File's Owner.
When your app runs, it will try to instantiate the view controller
from your storyboard. When it realizes there's no view in the
storyboard for that controller, it will automatically find the file
MyViewController.xib and load it from there.
Step 2. Organize the contents of your main view into detached views that make sense.
In your example above, it looks like you have different views for different states of the game (game over, high score, etc.) Take each of those and remove them from the main view. With your controller in it's own XIB file, you can just drag the view out in to the whitespace around your controller. Each view you drag out becomes a top level object in the XIB file that you can design and see easily.
You're no longer stuck with an iPhone-5-sized workspace.
Create IBOutlets for each of your detached, top level views so you can reference them in your controller.
In viewDidLoad, programmatically add each of the separate views to your main view. Note that you may want to set their frames, make some of them invisible, etc. You have to write more code, but it's generally worth it for an easily maintainable XIB.