Start a new activity in iOS programmatically - ios

I am creating my application without using StoryBoard, basically creating Widgets (UIViews) and adding them to my rootController.view
self.view.addSubview(view)
My question is fairly basic, but I would like to have some guidance in it. How do I bring up a new activity (as in Android) programmatically and have its rootViewController set to an object of a different UIViewController.
Is the concept of a window the same as an activity (in Android)?
How can I make the new window/activity slide in from the right, say when a button is clicked?
p.s I am building this application in Swift.

So, I haven't done much Android development, only some small projects. I have done quite a bit of iOS development though. While the concepts are similar, they are not exactly the same.
The piece of code you posted where you add a subview to your existing superview (current view controller) will not get you the effect you're looking for. What you want to do is push your next view controller on to the screen.
self.navigationController?.pushViewController(yourNewVC, animated: true)
This will give the effect of sliding the view controller being pushed in from the right as you described.

Window is not activity.
ViewControllers are activity.
You can push or present new view controller to go to new activity (viewcontroller)
You can see here how can you push or present view controller.

Related

Toggling what is viewed when using an app

I am fairly new to swift and iOS programming, and I've been watching video tutorials of people making things visible and not visible. When it comes to large scale projects I am start to doubt that they have one million features toggling between visible and not visible on the tiny screen.
So my question is, is I am making a tiny app how do I transition from basic view such as logging into a game and changing the login view to actually ingame. How do these type of things work?
What you're asking is the basics of programming on Apple platforms. This can't be simply explained in a single answer. Please, start reading this tutorial from Apple to get the understanding of the MVC concept and storyboards.
In short. You use the storyboard in Xcode to build your screens. Each screen is a scene in your program and represents a view controller. The view controller organizes how data is displayed on a screen and how to react to user input. You can create view controllers in code in Xcode and link these to the scenes (that are also view controllers) in the storyboard. In the code you can program the behavior of the different views that you put in each scene. Moving from onze scene to another is done with segues.
A segue can be made programmatically, you drag iT from onze view controller to the other. Or, in the storyboard boy dragging it from, e.g., from a button to the next view controller. You give the segue na identificeren and in prepare for segue (a method) you can program what data needs to be transferred from the existing to the destination view controller.

Special Pop Up View Controller

I am currently building a shopping list program, and need some advice. When I currently add a new object, it covers the entire screen, even on the iPad. But I saw this design that I really like, but don't know how to complete.
View Controller on top of another in the center of the screen
I would like to do what this person did, but need some help completing it. I currently am programming only in Swift 2.3, because of a stale computer, and would rather an example in that version.
Simply set the modalPresentationStyle of the view controller you are presenting to formSheet (whatever the Swift 2.3 name of that is). Then present it as your normally would with presentViewController....

iOS UINavigationController-like behaviour in a partial screen area (2016)

(I have read other questions and answers on this topic, but most are very old and do not relate to iOS 9 or 10.)
The app design calls for the top half of the display to always contain the same content. (An image being edited by the user.)
The bottom half of the display needs a UITableView. When a UITableViewCell is tapped, the bottom section needs to transition to a new UIViewController with slide-on animation, similar to how UINavigationController push segues work.
Problem: only the bottom view needs to transition to the new view controller(s), and back again. The upper half of the view hierarchy needs to remain unaffected. For this reason, I can't place everything inside a UINavigationController, and I can't have a UINavigationBar at the top of the screen.
Question: what approach should I take in such a situation, where I need only one UIView hierarchy to transition in push-segue fashion, but not anything else? Thanks.
Edited with Solution
Solution follows, for those following along at home.
Yes, you can actually use a UINavigationController for the bottom half.
If you are using Storyboards, the easiest way to do this is to use a container view for each part of the screen which you then can embed a UIViewController in for the top part and a UINavigationController in for the bottom part. If you are doing this programmatically, just add the view controllers as child view controllers to your app's initial view controller (see this answer for more info) which is essentially what the Storyboard will do for you automatically when using a container view.
As a child view controller, the UINavigationController will act independently from the top UIViewController and should behave as expected.
I recommend the programatic approach for the following reasons:
It helps you understand the inner workings of child/parent view controllers much better which will likely save you a significant amount of debugging time down the line.
It makes adding/removing/swapping child view controllers as simple as a few lines of code. Trying to do this with Storyboards is notoriously hacky and cumbersome.
It's much easier to keep track of changes using GIT (most mid-size/larger companies actually prohibit Storyboards for this very reason)
If you want change in part of the screen you can use container view. For details refer Swift - How to link two view controllers into one container view and switch between them using segmented control?
You can use multiple view in one view controller and can give animation like push or pop to show or hide it.
Second approach is you can use Container View which will give exact effect like navigation stack.

Display new iOS UIView everywhere in existing app [duplicate]

I am subclassing UIApplication to intercept and display touches in my TouchDisplay view. I would like to extend the Application, Window, Delegate or Main ViewController in order to keep my TouchDisplay view on top of all other views. As my and most other applications work, views and controllers are added and removed all the time. I figure the correct answer will be able to deal with these additions and removals and stil keep the TouchDisplay view on top.
Thanks for your help,
Joe
Here are a few approaches you could take for this:
If you're targeting iOS 5+ and iPad only, you can make a top-level view controller which has two contained view controllers. The first would be a view controller for your "TouchDisplay" view. The second would be the application's normal root view controller. (i.e. your existing main view controller; you'll need to set definesPresentationContext to YES on this view controller) Since you're writing the container view controller, you can order those two subviews however you like. There is a WWDC 2011 Talk on view controller containment that goes into great detail about this. This is the most "correct" approach IMHO, because it gives you a view controller for your TouchDisplay view, handles rotation and generally plays nice with others. (This only works on iPad, because on iPhone a new modal view always covers the full screen.)
A more straight-forward approach is to simply add your TouchView to your existing top-level UIWindow as a subview with addSubview:. Most applications don't actually remove the top-level view controller or add new top-level ones; they just present other view controllers from it. A view you add in the top-level window will stay above those. Of course, your app may not follow this rule, in which case you might try option #3 instead. This has rotation gotchas (your view will not auto-rotate when the device rotates, so you need to do this yourself.) You could also force your view back to top, say, on a 1-second timer, if you are having issues with other things covering it. This is also not as nice as option #1 because you don't get a UIViewController, just a UIView.
The most extreme approach is that you can create another UIWindow and give it a higher window level, such as UIWindowLevelAlert and put your TouchDisplay view in that. You can then make the window background transparent, and it will stay above your normal app content. There are lots of gotchas here, especially about auto-rotation and which window is the keyWindow (which is why you should use #1 or #2 instead if you can).
After some time I was able to get my app working. I have made an easy to use overlay that shows touch feedback over your existing application.
You can download the project here:
https://github.com/megaplow/FingerTracks/tree/master/FingerTracks
Happy coding,
Joe

Adding a subview that stays in place as you navigate through views

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

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