Interaction between two UIViewControllers on one screen in Swift - ios

I apologize for not actually screenshotting my storyboard on XCode. This is a Microsoft Paint rendition of the storyboard. Basically I want to be able to do something as simple as click the "Say Hello!" button on the main view controller and change the label in the panel view controller to say "Hello!" I've tried the process listed out on numerous StackOverflow posts and this article but I think I am missing something because it flat out does not work. I think there should be a segue between the main view controller and panel view controller but don't know which way to turn it and what type to use.
For what it is worth, I am using the ARSlidingPanel library to get the desired layout that I need. The only problem is now I can't interact between the two view controllers.
Any tips? Thanks!

when you are in main view controller, you can get the object of container. while loading the panel view controller you must have created its object in container. so from main view controller you can acess this object of panel view controller and all of its properties. for example :
in main VC
container = self.parentViewController;
container.panel.label.text = #"some text";
where panel is the property in container controller of panel view controller type.

Related

Relationship among window, rootviewcontroller, childviewcontroller, navigationcontroller in iOS

I haven't really seen any resource that gives a good and simple explanations on relationship among window, rootviewcontroller, childviewcontroller, navigationcontroller and how they piece together in iOS development. Anyone one knows how to put this in a easy-to-understand way or any online resource or book that does a good job in explaining it?
Per the documentation on UIWindow:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIWindow_Class/
A UIWindow object provides the backdrop for your app’s user interface and provides important event-handling behaviors. Windows do not have any visual appearance of their own, but they are crucial to the presentation of your app’s views.
Xcode typically provides your application's main window, but you can add more if you need to.
From the documentation link you can see that UIWindow is actually a UIView
Enter your first view controller. Like providing a main window, when you start a new Project in Xcode the project template usually wires up your initial view controller, which as the name implies controls a view (UIView).
You could call this initial view controller your RootViewController but if you get a handle on the UIWindow you could just as easily swap out the current initial view controller's view for any other view controller view you like.
That probably doesn't help with hard and fast rules for things, but if I understand what you are asking, RootViewController is likely the initial view controller for you application. For example, if you are using Storyboards, Xcode typically makes Main.storyboard, you will see a gray arrow pointing to the UIViewController representation.
This is pointing to the Storyboards Initial View Controller. You can verify this from the Attributes Inspector. Select the view controller then select the attribute inspector:
So that's basically RootViewController. ChildViewController is just any other view controller that is a child of a view controller.
I assume what you are referring to is:
addChildViewController:
removeFromParentViewController
willMoveToParentViewController:
didMoveToParentViewController:
You can read more about these methods here:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIViewController_Class/
Under Implementing a Container View Controller
The quick gist of it is, A View Controller controls a view. View's can have subviews. Those subviews can come from other View Controllers. The methods outlined above pretty much just enable things like viewWillAppear, or viewWillDiappear to be called on the child view controller automatically when those methods are invoked on the parent view controller.
Per the docs:
By default, rotation and appearance callbacks are automatically forwarded to children. You may optionally override the shouldAutomaticallyForwardRotationMethods and shouldAutomaticallyForwardAppearanceMethods methods to take control of this behavior yourself.
a NavigationController is just like any other View Controller. It contains some special behavior for transitioning between views, but like other View Controllers it has a View (UIView) that it manages. A navigation controller could be your Initial View Controller / RootViewController just as any other View Controller can be, it all just depends on what you are trying to do. For example, a simple app that is just a list view, where you can tap an item and get a detail view could be constructed as:
1) Initial View Controller -> NavigationController
2) The NavigationController's first ViewController (Apple calls this a RootViewController) would then be a TableViewController.
3) Selecting a TableCell in the TableView (TableViewController manages a TableView) would then transition you to your Detail View Controller. The Navigation Controller knows how to do all that Sliding back and forth drama.
That's a pretty simplistic overview you can search the internet/youtube for more full featured tutorials outlining the same thing in more detail.
Example: https://www.raywenderlich.com/113388/storyboards-tutorial-in-ios-9-part-1
It's worth your time to do a few of these to get your bearings. Yes, it will likely cost you a few hours of your day. Take heart, everyone who ever started doing iOS development had to go though the same thing. =)

iOS/Swift/Storyboard: Add PageViewController using only *part* of screen?

New to Swift. I've seen many tutorials on using PageViewController, but they always have the Page View taking up the whole screen.
I'm trying to implement a Page View functionality in only PART of my app, not the entire screen, so that other "static" elements (e.g. a ToolBar) can remain. Something that would look kinda like this...
https://imgur.com/9wM1vll --- (Need more rep. before embedding images)
...where swiping will cause different images to appear as seen in various PageViewController tutorials (e.g. http://www.appcoda.com/uipageviewcontroller-storyboard-tutorial/).
When I start with a Single View Application, I go to Storyboard and try to drag a "Page View Controller" from the Object Library into the ViewController frame, it just "bounces back", i.e. it won't let me add the Page View Controller.
Now, if I add the Page View Controller to the white space around the other View Controller, then this gets back to the tutorials where the PageViewController takes up the entire screen and I don't want that.
How does one achieve this?
Thanks.
Sorry if this is a dupe but I have tried & failed to find anything that answers my question directly. The closest are Implement PageViewController in TableViewController details or Adding a UIPageViewController to a subview, subview only shows edge of pageContentview, but these are not similar enough for me to comprehend, plus they're in Objective C which I've not yet learned.
When I start with a Single View Application, I go to Storyboard and try to drag a "Page View Controller" from the Object Library into the ViewController frame, it just "bounces back", i.e. it won't let me add the Page View Controller.
A page view controller is a view controller. Thus, to make its view occupy only part of the screen, you must obey the rules for view controllers in general: you need a custom parent view controller, and the page view controller must be its child view controller — and you must do the elaborate dance that this entails when you create the child and put its view into the interface.
To get the storyboard to do the dance for you, use a Container View and hook it by its embed segue to the page view controller:
(Still, in my opinion it is always better to learn to do the dance manually, in code, yourself.)

Best practice to develop common header view across all controllers/windows in iOS app

I'm keeping on developing an iPhone app (rigth now native one) and I would need to use a common "header" for all views but I don't want/need a UINavigationBar and prefer much more have a common "partial view". It will have some actions to perform but always the same ones (showing notifications panel, basically). It should be something like you can see in the screenshots.
I don't need (I feel) delegation because the controller's view can handle notifications and show them when user clicked the customize button.
I don't mind to use a Nib o make the view hardcoded but I'm not sure how I must make an instance of the view or the controller that handles it within each app tab (I'm using UITabBar as navigation control).
From my point of view it doesn't exist a way to get a common controller to call wherever needed; you just can use some method to present new controller as modal o push it out and I think that is not what I'm looking for.
Any idea is welcome. Thanks
Create a custom view controller with 2 subviews. Subview 1 is the header. Subview 2 is the container view where child view controllers are displayed (your tab bar controller in this case).
Your custom view controller could be the delegate of the tab bar controller if you want, so it can be notified when the tabs change and update anything on the header view.
Well, finally is have used the solution I found on the link http://patientprogrammer.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/re-usable-subviews-in-ios/
I have created a Nib with a view controller and then, in the main window I have added two view, the top one subclasses the view controller for the Nib view and it is rendered automatically when app is launched without a single line of code within "main" controller. See the screenshots for more detail:
Thank you very much for your help

iOS: Container View Controller Pattern

I'm having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around the way a container view controller is meant to be implemented.
I dragged a container into my main view controller and it automatically creates the embedded view controller and is connected via an embed segue. I can then access it from my main view controller via prepareForSegue.
I'm a bit confused as to creating and using these on the fly. Ie say I want to use it as an alert view. Am I meant to just initialize the view once, and then change its contents each time the display is meant to be triggered? Should I be calling presentViewController or just setting hidden/animating the view in and out?
Having trouble articulating. Hopefully someone speaks newb and can understand me.
Using an embedded controller that you get with a container view is not a good fit for something like an alert. You can't create these "on the fly" this way, since that embedded controller is instantiated at the same time as the controller it's contained in (you don't president it). You can do the same thing in code as what a container view gives you using the custom container controller procedures (see Apple's "Creating Custom Container View Controllers" document). If you just want to make a custom alert view like view, I would just create a custom view and add it as a subview to your controller.
Use setHidden: method when you want to show or hide that view.
[_myAlertView setHidden:YES];
[_myAlertView setHidden:NO];
I hope that I understood your question correctly.

UzysSlideMenu: how to use several view controllers?

I just came across a slide-in menu I really like: https://github.com/uzysjung/UzysSlideMenu
I would like to use this menu for an application that uses several view controllers (UIViewControllers and UINavigationControllers).
In Xcode, I created a single view application and made the view controller (MenuViewController) show the menu, like the creator did in his example project. I added more view controllers to the storyboard and connected them via segues to the MenuViewController. Upon selecting a menu item, these segues are triggered and the selected view is shown - so far so good.
But now, I run into the following problem:
All my view controllers are shown in full screen. That means that VCs that get segue'd in the viewport don't show the menu, because it's just not implemented there. I could put the menu in every VC, but that doesn't seem to be the right way to do it (even if I use some custom delegate method that every controller calls, like putMenuInViewController:(UIViewController *)target). I think I need something like a global singleton for the menu and make it appear in every view controller, but I have absolutely no idea on how to it or what to google for.
Any points into the right direction are greatly appreciated :)
I think you need to implement one root view controller with this menu as singleton, and add other view controller as child view controller to it.
I wrote a post about it, you can find it here:http://antrix1989.blogspot.com/2013/09/uiviewcontroller-as-singleton.html

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