I want to learn parent - child concepts in iOS. I found a some app in app store and I liked the their design. They have 3 button in same view controller when the user taps a button below view changes and calls their view controllers. Like a TabBar.
I tried to create 3 xib files. When the user taps the buttons they are awaking from nib and I added them to my containerView subview. It works. But I couldn't send a data between them because there is no prepare for segue method to so i couldn't prepared them.
I tried to create 3 viewController in Storyboard and I use them with the Storyboard ID. It works. But still can't transfer data between them.
I didn't understand what is the best approach for solve this problem ? I researched on the web about Custom Segues and Parent - Child concepts but I couldn't find anything.
What is the best approach for make a container like in the image ?
Thank you.
I am not sure if there is something like a best approach, at least in general term. It really depends on your specific demands and other logic of your app.
Both creating XIB files and creating ViewControllers in Storyboard together with their ID is ok. Here it is more about your preferred way. I would say that today you will probably see more using Storyboard than XIB files.
In terms of data transition. There are several ways, if it is not some very heavy logic then delegates can do it pretty well and easy.
Related
The app I am currently working on requires that I do not use ANY storyboards. Therefore I need to do everything programmatically. One thing I seem to be struggling with is switching between two UIViewControllers.
The issue is that every time I call the self.present() method; it creates a brand new instance of the class I would like to show. So when I go into Xcode's visual debugger, I see over 15 different views that are all stacked and are merely instantiations of one another. Ex: View1, View2, View1, View2, View1, View2, View1... This constant repetition of the views is significantly hurting the performance of my app. So my question:
Is there a way that I can switch between my two UIViewControllers without constantly creating a new instance of each one?
Again, I am doing all of this with ALL storyboards DELETED. So the solution I necessary needs to be implemented using ONLY code.
I think you should create main ViewController.
if you keep your two instance view controller, create two controller in mainViewController. Then keep that in main viewController.
And push view controller you want to present in navigation of main view controller
if you want to change second view controller pop navigation controller and push another, or just push other controller.
if you want keep your instance view controller i think it's best option for you
I think that it is really important to realize the fact that the view controller will show up multiple times in the debugger because that is something that can throw off the performance of the app. I really like the way you mention that in your comment. This is one of the main differences that can outstand you from another programmer in the same field. One of the most easiest and simple ways to fix this problem would be using the self.dismiss() method. Another way to dismiss this view controller would be to use a navigation controller to fix this problem. A navigation controller will push the main view controller out of the way and it will not create multiple instances of it. This will be the most efficient as it doesn't require a lot of code and a mere initialization of the UINavigationController class implemented in the UIKit. This is one of the most important tools and resources that you must make use of while coding in xcode and developing your skills in the swift ios field. Since this problem is not one of the most common to find on the internet, it is very beneficial for you to post it on this forum page and will really be helpful for some other programmers unaware of such methods and ways to code. One of the questions that I have for you is the fact that you don't want to use storyboards. Why don't you want to use storyboards and only make it proGrAMitcally? This is one of the very questions that manages to astound me. The storyboard is an implementation that makes it very easy for xcode and swift users to work around the tedious work that has to be done while working in the coding aspect. It only takes a few lines of code and you can get a seGu done very easily. The switch is very easily done and you can find this method on some youtube channels. For this type of work, I recommend VigneshSriniswami Patel and ShaniLakshmiVishnuJiSwami, these content creators will help guide you to becoming an xcode master.
Hope I helped!
Is it a good practise to creates views in xcode and hide them and when required show them?
I am asking that because I prefer to create views visually and not in code.
If the view is to complex(a lot of subviews) should I create a new view controller to it?
I know there isn't a specify question here but I really need a clarification on this matter.
Regards
One of my first iOS applications had a tab bar and views that the user could switch between. Originally it was done by hiding and showing the right views depending on what the user pressed on the tab bar. This ended up being a complex disaster.
I then rewrote the app so that each tab bar view had its own UIViewController with its own set of views. That turned out to be so much easier to manage. (I also changed from using Interface Builder to straight code for creating the views, but that's beside the point and you can continue to use IB if you want.)
As for me, I prefer folowing practice:
Usually, a use storyboards,where views are placed, but if a view is complex, I create a separate XIB file, arrange all subviews there, and then in storyboard drag an UIView subclass and connect my XIB view with it.It helps to avoid mess in storyboard.
As for hiding views, I also don't recommend such practice as it can become very complex to understand your code and all those views are allocated when XIB is loaded, so the mobile developing rule "do as lazy as u can" is not met. We should try to spend as less memory as it's possible.
UIView is the best way to create iOS app, esp. if you want to reuse the code.
For example if you have same view to present in iPad n iPhone then using UIView can result in lots of similar code in View-controller
In another case if your view might need to have multiple table view it can be quite complex to handle each with delegates in ViewController. But separate view will solve this problem.
I have made my 1st open source code after learning how to use View
https://github.com/bishalg/BGRadioList
which I had learned from
http://www.raywenderlich.com/1768/uiview-tutorial-for-ios-how-to-make-a-custom-uiview-in-ios-5-a-5-star-rating-view
About the hiding view - I have used lots of hide and show view codes in my apps but believe me at one point it will become complex and unmanageable if you have lots of views.
I am a beginner at best when it comes to xcode, iOS, and objective-c. I have been working on a project that has had me looking up information a lot. I have already been learning a lot, but I realized lately that I have forming some bad practices.
I have used Storyboard to lay out the abstract view of the app. The first thing I noticed I was doing dealt with popover views for iPad. I did not know how to dismiss them via button press, so I was creating a new modal segue from the popover button back to the main view.
I realized that this was creating a new view and placing it over my existing view. This would start to chain until the program eventually crashed. Last night I learned the importance of delegates and how they can help me gracefully dismiss the popover view.
Based on the documentation I have read for modal views, it appears that I need to be dismissing those types of views as well.
My question regards to proper practice when building an app. What if I have a ViewController that has 10 buttons, each of which will spawn a popover that is similar yet features slightly different content. Is it OK to create 10 new views in storyboard and drag and drop the UI elements on there? This means that the main view controller is going to have 10 delegates, one for each.
OR would it be best to create one general view, load the content dynamically, and only worry about one delegate in the presenting view controller?
EDIT: As far as the differences between them, they each have a list of labels (questions) and a UISegmentedControl to match the label. This will allow the user to fill out a survey. There are currently 10 views because I have 10 sets of questions that I feel deserve different views. At the bottom of each view there are 4 buttons. Every view must include these 4 buttons.
It's "ok" but not practical to have those 10+ delegates. If these ViewControllers only differ slightly - have you considered creating a "base" view controller and then adding/updating some of the differences programmatically depending on the content? I think it all depends on what you want to display and how much these differ. I would definitely not recommend 10+ delegates all delegating back to the same controller.
Basically, I'm saying yes to your "OR" question.
I'm just getting back into iOS development after a year or so away and am looking for a way to have a single view above or below a UITabViewController view. The idea is to have one ad view that is used throughout the app instead of one on each tab. The constant reinitializing of the ad view seems like it would be a lot of overhead so having one persist throughout would seem to be more effective.
I've searched for this but not found much of anything so even a useful link would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Jason
I see several approaches here:
Since you are setting up your view hierarchy in your application's delegate, I'd suggest creating a separate UIViewController and managing it from your app delegate. That way you can show/hide it in the main UIWindow, without having to do much work.
You can subclass UITabBarController and show the ad in the visible view controller. This is more work, but your app architecture is arguably cleaner, because your app delegate doesn't get cluttered with ad-related code.
Another option is to look into a UIViewController category, where you can manage add related code. Not necessarily the cleanest, but it keeps the ads out of both your app delegate, and your tab bar controller. (You'd add the ad view as a category property via runtime level calls and associate objects, but that gets messy.)
I'd probably go with the first approach if it were me, but I could argue for either of the other two approaches, since an ad view doesn't really necessitate it's own view controller.
How about create a parent view controller and each view controller inherits from that parent view controller? Parent view controller has a ad view or table view, so every child view controller will has those two view as well.
Okay, after spending some time trying to create and manage a customer view controller for this I stumbled on the Container View Controller capability Apple added in iOS 5. I have no need to support iOS 4 or earlier so this works good for me. There's a good description of it here (unfortunately the author never wrote part 2 with a tutorial):
Container View Controller description
And a decent tutorial is available here:
Container View Controller tutorial
Between the two of these I was able to create a good setup with an AdViewController and BodyViewController (TabBarController) contained in a Container View Controller. This gives me all the capabilities I need (at least so far).
Background
I'm using interface builder to create the UI for an app I'm working on. The app has a single screen that displays a series of buttons. Clicking on a button displays an associated view which overlays the buttons. Clicking another button hides the previous overlay view and displays another one.
Too make managing the UI easier in IB I've decided to create multiple nib files for each sub view that is to appear when clicking the relevant button. I'm then loading the sub view's nib file in the view controller's viewDidLoad method using the UINib class.
The idea behind this was to avoid having multiple views stacked on top of each other in a single nib file as this would be hard to manipulate in IB. I could have created all the views in code but this would require a lot of tedious coding as the layouts of each sub view are quite complex (with multiple child views).
Example code loading a sub view from a nib file.
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
UINib *aSubViewNib = [UINib nibWithNibName:#"aSubView" bundle:nil];
NSArray *bundleObjects = [aSubViewNib instantiateWithOwner:self options:nil];
// get root view from bundle array
UIView *aSubView = [bundleObjects objectAtIndex:0];
[self.view addSubview:aSubView];
...
The code above is repeated for the other views.
To summarise I have a single screen iPhone app that has layered views that are shown/hidden by clicking buttons. This is achieved with a single view controller with an associated nib file and a series of additional nib files for the sub views which are loaded in the view controller's viewDidLoad method.
Questions!
Sorry for the long introduction but I wanted to be very clear what it is I am doing.
Is my approach bad or unusual?
Are there any potential issues to doing it this way?
What have other people done when they need a dynamic interface and
still want to keep everything in Interface Builder?
Notes
Before anyone asks why don't I just display the sub views on a new screen and use the navigation bar, let me say that I have very good reasons and I do understand iOS UI guidelines. The above use case is not exactly my use case but it's one that clearly describes the problem without getting bogged down in my development app.
Also I know I could have written all the sub views as code but each sub view has a complex layout of child views and it would be a lot of code and messing around to try and get them looking right.
Thanks in advance.
There isn't necessarily a 1-to-1 relationship between view controllers and views. Most views contain many subviews, which are views themselves, so this literally doesn't make sense.
However, depending on the complexity of the views (including their content), you may want separate view controllers... or not.
For example, if you have two sbuviews that are each tableViews, you may want to have one view controller for each tableView. This is because each tableView is looking at the same delegate methods, and if they are in the same viewController, then the delegate methods have to differentiate between the tableViews. The delegate methods have signatures that allow this, but, in my experience, it can really make for a messy code design that is hard to follow and hard to manage.
On the other hand, you may have two tables that are managed by the same viewController, where one table is filled with meaningful data and the other is simply a place holder (as when the data source is empty). One might be visible while the other is not. Why make you life complicated by creating two view controllers when both are driven by the same data source (the model)?
In my mind, it comes down to how difficult it is to follow and manage the code. If the complexity of using a single view controller becomes burdensome, consider using more view controllers.
UPDATE
By the way, I have an example that I am currently working with that may illustrate a similar situation. In the InAppSettingsKit, that a lot of developers use, there are several xib files for pieces of the main view. You can look at the structure here on github. There is one main view controllers and several xib files. (There is also what I would call a "helper" view controller and an email composer view controller.) In this example, the xib files may be used multiple times to specify the layout of table view cells. There is no view controller for each xib file, though. (The documentation for InAppSettingsKit is sparse, so these things may not be obvious just by taking a quick look at it.)
Every View should have a corresponding UIViewController. Using one ViewController to "Control" more than one view breaks the MVC paradigm. "Controlling" multiple "views" from one controller will make it much harder to change one thing without breaking something else. The choices you make on how to present the content to the end user will be different for every individual. So if you say a NavigationController won't work in your case, maybe a Modal view is the answer or, you might just instantiate your custom UIViewControllers and add them to your view ([addSubview:]), if thats the road you want, but like I said, it would be beneficial for you to make a "controller" for each view object along with the corresponding xib. If you need information sent back, use a delegate or use Notifications to send the message back to the parent view. I learned the hard way that not following MVC paradigm, will make you life miserable. Try and keep your code as decoupled as possible. And read up on the MVC design pattern, you won't regret it.
actually its possible to do this.
Open your .xib file,select File’s Owner(in placeholder) -> "identity inspector" (utilities) -> change class name to your controller classname -> press control and drag file's owner placeholder to View object, select "view" in dialog.
Now you can customize your view.
p.s. you can use the same outlets as first xib, you need only to drag them to the new xib(+control sure).
here is an explained tutorial:
http://irawd.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/how-to-link-a-xib-file-to-a-class-and-use-2-xib-files-for-iphone4-and-iphone5/