How to get the ViewController from UITabBarItem - ios

Question

When a user taps on an item, I want to get the ViewController associated with that tab.
The TabBar delegate no longer provides the ViewController delegate. Instead, it provides a didSelectItem delegate.
override func tabBar(tabBar: UITabBar, didSelectItem item: UITabBarItem) {
}
How do I get the ViewController from UITabBarItem?

Answer 1

If you're using a UITabBarController and not just a UITabBar look into using UITabBarControllerDelegate rather than UITabBarDelegate. UITabBarControllerDelegate provides the method:
func tabBarController(_ tabBarController: UITabBarController,
didSelectViewController viewController: UIViewController)

Answer 2

This is a swift 4 Extension version that works for me:
import UIKit
extension UIApplication {
var visibleViewController: UIViewController? {
guard let rootViewController = keyWindow?.rootViewController else {
return nil
}
return getVisibleViewController(rootViewController)
}
private func getVisibleViewController(_ rootViewController: UIViewController) -> UIViewController? {
if let presentedViewController = rootViewController.presentedViewController {
return getVisibleViewController(presentedViewController)
}
if let navigationController = rootViewController as? UINavigationController {
return navigationController.visibleViewController
}
if let tabBarController = rootViewController as? UITabBarController {
// Uncomment the line bellow the TabBarController
//return tabBarController.selectedViewController
// uncomment the line bellow to get the visible ViewController of the TabBarController
return getVisibleViewController(tabBarController.selectedViewController!)
}
return rootViewController
}
}
This can be called as easy as this:
let visibleVC = UIApplication.shared.visibleViewController
I hope this work for you as well ;)