Is it okay to have a lot of segues between view controllers? - ios

Question

So I'm quite new to iOS developing and have decided to venture down the swift path. I'm now working with multiple view controllers and passing data between, and what I'm wondering is if it is bad practice to have multiple (like 9-15) segues between 2 view controllers?
Basically what I have is a normal VC with 9 different buttons. Now, what I want is for each button to send different data to the subsequent tabbed VC instead of having a different VC for each button/catagory.
it would look something like this :
override func prepareForSegue(segue: UIStoryboardSegue, sender: AnyObject?) {
let tabBarController = segue.destinationViewController as! UITabBarController
let svc = tabBarController.viewControllers![0] as! InfoViewController
let svc2 = tabBarController.viewControllers![1] as! DIYViewController
if segue.identifier == "wind" {
svc.titleString = "Wind Power... what a powerful thing"
} else if segue.identifier == "geothermal" {
//send info about geothermal
} else if segue.identifier == "hydroelectric" {
//send infor about hydroelectricity
} else if segue.identifier == "" {
//code
} else if segue.identifier == "" {
//code
} else if segue.identifier == "" {
//code
} else if segue.identifier == "" {
//code
}
}
is there a more conventional way to accomplish this?

Answer 1

You should have only one segue, and pass the data in prepareForSegue(_:sender:). E.g. In your first view controller, you pass the variable:
class ViewController: UIViewController {
var myVariable: String!
#IBAction func button1Action(sender: AnyObject) {
myVariable = "Hello"
}
#IBAction func button2Action(sender: AnyObject) {
myVariable = "Hola"
}
override func prepareForSegue(segue: UIStoryboardSegue, sender: AnyObject?) {
if segue == "MySegue" {
let secondViewController = segue.destinationViewController as! ViewController
secondViewController.myVariable = myVariable
}
}
}
And in your second view controller, you can do whatever you want with your variable:
class SecondViewController: UIViewController {
var myVariable: String!
override func viewDidLoad() {
title = myVariable
}
}

Answer 2

You can create a NSObject subclass (e.g. MyAtmospherologyObject) and put all the needed properties within to store all the info for all 9 categories you might needed.
Then give it a type property and use enum for the only segue to determine what it was getting and how it should handle the rest of the data.
After this, you only need to send one object, which is the MyAtmospherologyObject. This could be useful as you can pass around the object anywhere as a whole once you initialized it, and reuse it from there.
e.g. Objective-C (I know it's not Swift, but you get the idea.)
MyAtmospherologyObject.h
//
// MyAtmospherologyObject.h
//
#import Foundation;
typedef NS_ENUM(NSUInteger, MyAtmospherologyType) {
MyAtmospherologyGeothermalType = 0,
MyAtmospherologyHydroelectricType
};
#interface MyAtmospherologyObject : NSObject
#property (nonatomic) MyAtmospherologyType type;
#property (nonatomic, strong) NSString *mySting;
- (MyAtmospherologyType)type;
#end
MyAtmospherologyObject.m
//
// MyAtmospherologyObject.m
//
#import "MyAtmospherologyObject.h"
#implementation MyAtmospherologyObject
- (instancetype)initWithType:(MyAtmospherologyType)aType
{
self = [super init];
if (self) {
_type = aType;
}
return self;
}
#pragma mark - NSKeyedArchiver
- (id)initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)decoder
{
if (self = [super init]) {
_type = [decoder decodeIntegerForKey:#"type"];
_mySting = [decoder decodeObjectForKey:#"mySting"];
}
return self;
}
- (void)encodeWithCoder:(NSCoder *)encoder
{
[encoder encodeInteger:_type forKey:#"type"];
[encoder encodeObject:_mySting forKey:#"mySting"];
}
#pragma mark - Methods
- (MyAtmospherologyObject)type
{
return _type;
}
#end
MyAtmospherologyViewController.m
// ...
#import "MyAtmospherologyObject.h"
#implementation MyAtmospherologyViewController
// ...
- (IBAction)buttonAction:(id)sender
{
MTKGSJournalQuestionnaireObject *object = [[MTKGSJournalQuestionnaireObject alloc] initWithType:MyAtmospherologyGeothermalType];
object.myString = #"aString";
[self performSegueWithIdentifier:#"MySegueIdentifier"
sender:object];
}
#pragma mark - UIStoryboardSegue
- (void)prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender
{
MyAtmospherologyObject *object = (MyAtmospherologyObject *)sender;
MyAtmospherologySegueViewController *vc = (MyAtmospherologySegueViewController *)segue.destinationViewController;
switch (object.type) {
case MyAtmospherologyGeothermalType:
vc.navigationItem.title = object.myString;
break;
case MyAtmospherologyHydroelectricType:
vc.navigationItem.title = object.myString;
break;
default:
break;
}
}
// ...
#end