ViewController not displaying contents when embedded in UIView - uiview

Question

I have a scrollview which contains two containers (UIViews). One UIView contains a UITableView which displays correctly and another ViewController. The viewController has an image which fills it completely. However, when adding the View Controller if I set a background color that shows up.
//
// SideBarViewController.swift
// Sidebar
//
// Created by Satyajit Sarangi on 12/10/15.
// Copyright © 2015 Satyajit Sarangi. All rights reserved.
//
import UIKit
class SideBarViewController: UIViewController {
// MARK: Properties
var scrollView: UIScrollView!
let menuTableView = UITableView()
let sideBarContainerView = UIView()
let mainContainerView = UIView()
let testContainerView = UITableView()
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
// Do any additional setup after loading the view.
// Create a dictionary for the views for the visual format language
let containerViewsDict = Dictionary(dictionaryLiteral: ("sidebar_container", sideBarContainerView), ("main_container", mainContainerView))
// let scrollViewDict = Dictionary(dictionaryLiteral: ("scrollview", scrollView))
// Create two container
// Add the scroll view
scrollView = UIScrollView(frame: view.frame)
// Set Properties for scrollview
scrollView.scrollEnabled = true
scrollView.pagingEnabled = true
scrollView.contentSize = CGSizeMake(view.frame.width, view.frame.height)
// sideBarContainerView.backgroundColor = UIColor.yellowColor()
scrollView.addSubview(sideBarContainerView)
scrollView.addSubview(mainContainerView)
setupMainContainerView()
setupSideBarTableView()
// Add the Scroll View
view.addSubview(scrollView)
let horizontalConstraints = NSLayoutConstraint.constraintsWithVisualFormat("H:|[sidebar_container]-5-[main_container]|", options: NSLayoutFormatOptions(rawValue: 0), metrics: nil, views: containerViewsDict)
let scrollview_verticalConstraints1 = NSLayoutConstraint.constraintsWithVisualFormat("V:|[sidebar_container]|", options: NSLayoutFormatOptions(rawValue: 0), metrics: nil, views: containerViewsDict)
let scrollview_verticalConstraints2 = NSLayoutConstraint.constraintsWithVisualFormat("V:|[main_container]|", options: NSLayoutFormatOptions(rawValue: 0), metrics: nil, views: containerViewsDict)
sideBarContainerView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
mainContainerView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
scrollView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
scrollView.addConstraints(horizontalConstraints)
scrollView.addConstraints(scrollview_verticalConstraints1)
scrollView.addConstraints(scrollview_verticalConstraints2)
// Add constraints for the Scroll View
// let scrollview_constraint_v = NSLayoutConstraint.constraintsWithVisualFormat("V:|[scrollview]|", options: NSLayoutFormatOptions(rawValue: 0), metrics: nil, views: scrollViewDict)
// let scrollview_constraint_h = NSLayoutConstraint.constraintsWithVisualFormat("H:|[scrollview]|", options: NSLayoutFormatOptions(rawValue: 0), metrics: nil, views: scrollViewDict)
// scrollView.addConstraints(scrollview_constraint_v)
// scrollView.addConstraints(scrollview_constraint_h)
}
override func viewDidLayoutSubviews() {
super.viewDidLayoutSubviews()
scrollView.frame = view.bounds
view.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, scrollView.contentSize.width, scrollView.contentSize.height)
scrollView.setContentOffset(CGPoint(x: 100, y: 0), animated: true)
}
// MARK: Set UI Properties
func setupSideBarTableView() {
menuTableView.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, 200, scrollView.frame.height)
menuTableView.contentSize = CGSizeMake(1000, 1000)
menuTableView.backgroundColor = UIColor.redColor()
sideBarContainerView.addSubview(menuTableView)
let dict = Dictionary(dictionaryLiteral: ("menu_table", menuTableView))
let constraint_h = NSLayoutConstraint.constraintsWithVisualFormat("H:|[menu_table]|", options: NSLayoutFormatOptions(rawValue: 0), metrics: nil, views: dict)
let constraint_v = NSLayoutConstraint.constraintsWithVisualFormat("V:|[menu_table]|", options: NSLayoutFormatOptions(rawValue: 0), metrics: nil, views: dict)
sideBarContainerView.frame = menuTableView.frame
sideBarContainerView.addConstraints(constraint_h)
sideBarContainerView.addConstraints(constraint_v)
}
func setupMainContainerView() {
// testContainerView.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, 320, scrollView.frame.height)
// testContainerView.contentSize = CGSizeMake(1000, 1000)
// testContainerView.backgroundColor = UIColor.yellowColor()
let testContainerView = TestViewController()
self.addChildViewController(testContainerView)
mainContainerView.addSubview(testContainerView.view)
// let dict = Dictionary(dictionaryLiteral: ("test_container", testContainerView))
// let constraint_h = NSLayoutConstraint.constraintsWithVisualFormat("H:|[test_container]|", options: NSLayoutFormatOptions(rawValue: 0), metrics: nil, views: dict)
// let constraint_v = NSLayoutConstraint.constraintsWithVisualFormat("V:|[test_container]|", options: NSLayoutFormatOptions(rawValue: 0), metrics: nil, views: dict)
mainContainerView.frame = testContainerView.view.frame
// mainContainerView.addConstraints(constraint_h)
// mainContainerView.addConstraints(constraint_v)
testContainerView.didMoveToParentViewController(self)
}
}
The view controller looks like this... and the code for it is pasted below. As can be seen, the story board has the image and the viewDidLoad sets it to yellow. However, if I turn off background color, no image is seen.
import UIKit
class TestViewController: UIViewController {
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
// Do any additional setup after loading the view.
self.view.backgroundColor = UIColor.yellowColor()
}
}
How do I get the TestControllerView to display the views inside it?

Answer 1

You are instantiating the TestViewController like so:
let testContainerView = TestViewController()
That will not use the storyboard. If you want to use the storyboard, you have give that scene a "storyboard id" in Interface Builder, and then you can programmatically to do something like:
let testContainerView = storyboard?.instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier("TestViewController storyboard id here")
By the way, when you have these sorts of problems, it's useful to run the app from Xcode and then use the view debugger:
That lets you dynamically inspect the view hierarchy (so you can confirm whether something's really missing or just possibly off screen or otherwise not visible).