In order to allow for better customization in my app, I want to put UIAlertController within a UIViewController subclass. The alert should be a child of the UIViewController to allow for more flexibility.
What is the best way to achieve this?
I have tried so far to add the alert as a child view controller. When I want the alert to show up, I present the container view controller modally.
I have also tried to call presentViewController on the view controller (with the alert as a parameter). However, I'm not sure what the correct approach is to achieve what I am looking for.
Edit: Neither of these solutions were working as I had hoped, but I don't know if that is because I did something wrong or because the approach is wrong.
Edit 2: The added functionality is providing UIKeyCommands to make selection of the alert options easier. I am not subclassing UIAlertController for two reasons: (1) the documentation states that it should not be subclassed, and (2) adding key commands UIAlertController doesn't work.
Could you please explain what sort of flexibility such an approach provides? I'm not doubting that it does, as I'm relatively new to iOS development, but I can't quite figure out what you're trying to achieve using a child view controller.
If you simply want to present a UIAlertController from your view controller, just create the alert controller, configure it, and use presentViewController to display it.
As a general approach, however, I follow the advice found in the top answer in this thread. It suggests using either a UIAlertController subclass or category with a custom show method that provides the alert controller with its own window so that alerts can be presented 'globally' so to speak.
I don't think your question is absolutely clear, but maybe you want a custom pop-up view controller, not alert? Then you probably need something like STPopupController - it's customisable and easy to use.
Related
I am looking to create a subview that looks like a banner drop down view from the Navigation Bar.
or like this
I feel like I see this effect all the time but have been struggling for a while to recreate this. I have it working on single view applications but I would like it to stay in place as I navigate from view to view. Right now I have the view setup in the storyboard and would like use this because I had issues attempting this programatically.
To create this "drop down banner view" and have it stay in place (until the user dismisses it) as a user navigates from screen to screen I see two solutions, each of which I have stumped myself on.
Create my own master view as the window.rootViewController
I see this as the cleaner solution in the end, but a bit harder to implement. Would it be possible to create a blank UIView as the rootViewController and whenever the app needs to drop down an alertBanner it could tell the rootController to do so? The view hierarchy would be something like
window -> masterViewController -> alertBannerController -> Navigation Controller -> otherViewControllers
but I cannot seem to have this set up the proper way.
Create an instance of my AlertBannerView from a subclass of the UINavigationController
Instead of calling the method to create a dropDownBanner from the rootViewController another option I see is subclassing the navigationController to be able to drop down this subview. This way it could still persist as the user navigates around views.
Once again I am having problems setting this up properly to work with the existing NavigationControllers
Conclusion
I do not know what is the best approach here.
This is different than the Apple Push Notifications drop down screen because I would like to customize it for the apps UI
Any tips on how to properly set up a custom view as the rootViewController would be great (where do I do this? what methods do I need to call?)
The problem to solve here is to have the alert banner view remain in the window until the user dismisses it even if they are navigating from screen to screen.
Thanks!
Depending on which version of iOS you're working with, yeah there are a lot of possibilities and ways of doing this. In fact, there are a lot of people who already have.
Best place for getting some ideas on how to attack this problem, to me, is by looking at an existing solution. CocoaControls is a great place for this.
For instance, here is a relatively recent one: https://www.cocoacontrols.com/controls/mpgnotification
And here is a list of a bunch of them ( they aren't sorted in any particular order unfortunately though ) : https://www.cocoacontrols.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=notification
I want to present view controllers as simple as with native presentViewController:animated:completion:, dismissViewControllerAnimated:completion: methods, but use custom animations for this.
The common way to do this is to perform custom animation (using view screenshots instead of view itself) and call presentViewController:vc animated:NO completion:… after.
But in this case view controller life-cycle messages are sent not in time. viewWillApper: and viewDidAppear: sent together instead of normal way: the first one just before animation and the last — after. Also they sent with animated parameter set to NO.
The other bad thing is that screenshot of a view (for animation) captured before viewWillApper: called. So it can be some outdated, and this will cause flicking at the end of animation.
I've searched lot of related projects on github/cocoapods (SO answers too), but did not find any with the right life-cycle of presented view controller. There are sometimes even worse solutions like simple views changing without any calls to life-cycle methods.
Possible solutions I know:
iOS7 — I can't, I need it in iOS6 too
Use transition between contained view controllers — Not as simple and reusable as "modal presenting"
Use tricky animations like here — my animation can't be implemented in similar way
While writing this question I thought about custom segue with overridden perform: method. But looks like it's not easy too. At least I don't know how to use it without storyboard and how to do dismiss in easy way.
Do you know how to present view controller with custom animation in iOS6 and make it's life-cycle happy?
Update: finally I've decided to use container view controller. It has ability to customize transitions of it's children and preserve VC's life-cycle. The bad side: it's not as easy as custom transitions in iOS7. It needs container, making xib some harder. And needs additional code to support.
Currently, I'm using presentPopoverFromRect:inView:permittedArrowDirections:animated: to present my popover. But I'm looking for more fanciful animations (eg. the popover expanding from a particular point) to present the popover.
I've tried searching with keywords ios present popover animation but can't find any useful results. Not sure if I'm using the wrong keywords or it is impossible to present popovers with animations.
When using a UIPopover, there is currently no easy way to present it with a different animation than the one that iOS provides. It would definitely be possible to do a custom animation to present a view, but it would be a very significant amount of extra work as you would have to do everything yourself. Two things you could look at if you really, really need to:
UIView animation. Links: Ray Wenderlich tutorial, Apple documentation (search the page for "animation").
Core Animation custom transitions.
As of iOS 7.0 it is possible to present any view controller so that it does not completely obscure the previous view controller, making it possible to create "fake" popovers. Using the UIViewControllerTransitioningDelegate protocol you can then create any animation you would like.
Here is a good example of how to create a fake popover with a custom animation.
I am having a hard time wording this when searching the internet so I am just going to ask the question.
I have an options view in my app that slides into view when the user clicks a button. This options view will display app information like settings. I want this options view to be displayed on every view controller in my app. I do not want to copy and paste the code for the options view into every viewcontroller file. The options view has quite a few outlets and actions and also calls many delegates.
How can I reuse this options view in all my view controllers without adding all the outlets, actions, and delegate methods each time?
I was going to make a new file with public methods, but I would still have to copy the outlets. Would this public methods file have to include delegate methods as well then?
Let me know if my question does not make sense. I am hoping there is a standard way of implementing something like this.
You can just have the options view be the view of an options view controller, and show it modally from any view controller you want. Is there some reason you're not doing it this way? This is the usual way to do this, not by having a view that you reuse in different controllers.
Add the options as a subview of the window, then make your App Delegate handle all of the options view's outlets
I'm at a point in the development of the app I'm working on where in order to complete the assignments given to me, it seems like the best way to accomplish what I need is to combine a UINavigationController with a UITabBarController.
Structurally, the app has a home page, and the rest of the app is navigated through the UITabBarController. This is a sound design for the original, but when I took over the development process of this, I had to make a lot of additions to the app, and there's technically supposed to be a "second" section which adds extra "features" if you will that aren't necessarily related to the main functionality of the app itself.
Basically, since everything begins at the Overview, the user is supposed to have a choice between just diving into the app itself, or using some of these extra features. I'm thinking the Navigation Controller would be fitting for the extra features, but I'm not sure how I can add to it.
What I need to know is - is this solution to the problem sound? If so, what's a good way to accomplish this? Is it ok to have a separate UIWindow class to link the Navigation Controller up with the TabBar Controller?
Granted, this app has used a lot of nib files, and every time I've tried to do something programmatically, it just hasn't worked. Thus, if someone could point out a NIB method of achieving this, I'd appreciate it.
According to Apple recommendation, UITabBarController should always be the root view controller of your app. So basically your main view is just one tab of your tab view controller, and so you just need to embed your main view controller in a navigation controller. This way you can navigate to whatever page you wish within that tab using the navigation controller, or you can go to other tabs using the tabbar controller.