I am new to programming iOS and I am not sure on how to implement multiple/relational drop down pickers into my design.
I have a search form in my app that works like a panel-menu. If you click on the search icon then the panel slides in with the search form.
But what is the best way to implement multiple/relational drop down pickers for my search form?
The pickers are relational. First you select a state then you must select a city. Once you selected a state in dropdown1 then dropdown2 should get populated depending on what you selected in dropdown1.
So is there any good solution for this when it comes to design?
I would like to show both pickers at all time. Kinda like a datepicker when year / month / day always is shown.
But if anyone has a good resource example on relational pickers please share.
Thanks in advance,
You can set this up with nested UITableViewControllers.
These types of projects are generally called Master/Detail.
The Master tableView would display the list of categories.
Once the user has selected a category, the specific category is passed to the detail View controller. It queries all the subcategories for that category.
This can all by done in Storyboard, using Auto Layout, self-sizing cells, and a combination of show and unwind segues.
A show segue pushes a (table) view controller onto the navigation controller stack. In your case, the category controller would push a subcategory controller. prepareForSegue:sender: is where the category controller would provide the category to the subcategory controller.
An unwind segue returns from a view controller, popping it off the navigation stack. In your case, the subcategory controller would return (with the selected subcategory information) to the category controller, or a previous view controller.
It may sound like a lot to digest, but if you read up on recent (i.e. for iOS 8) walkthroughs which use these concepts, you'll have learned some acceptable practices for how information and control should flow within an app.
There's one more thing I didn't mention, called Core Data. Core Data, and NSFetchedResultsController would be a great tool to learn and use for the app. It's probably more complex than anything I previously mentioned, but once you get a handle on it, you will really appreciate it, and may end up using it in many apps!
Don't get too bogged down with how your app should look. Focus on how the model and view controllers are written, and get a good understanding of the underlying frameworks. That's more important right now, than any fancy transition/animation.
The design of any app will evolve as you use it. You'll discover what works well, and what doesn't, so don't get too attached to any one way of organizing the data!
Hope that helps! Enjoy programming for iOS, it's a great platform!
Related
I am attempting to build an application in swift that is essentially a book and some pages of this book allow for user input that is stored in the application.
I am new to swift and am unsure of the best way to approach this problem. So far I have tried using a Page View Controller and separate View Controllers corresponding to each page. The Page View Controller class navigates through the pages using Storyboard IDs to instantiate the View Controllers in an array. This works in creating a navigable book but I run into issues when trying to create outlets from the text fields on some pages since essentially the View Controller is instantiated each time its accessed and so it does not permanently exist.
I am totally and utterly lost as to where I should go from here. Any advice/wisdom will be deeply appreciated.
Thank you
simplest Approach is Collection-view with pagingnation(self.collectionView.pagingEnabled = YES).
https://medium.com/#shaibalassiano/tutorial-horizontal-uicollectionview-with-paging-9421b479ee94
create multiple cell one for your Page(reading) and second for input field.
it also helps for memory management. because cell are reusable. and cell that are visible to Screen are only loaded in memory.
you can also Create Custom layout for animation as per your requirement.
I'm brand new to Swift but I want to create an app that has a table and each entry in that table will lead to a new screen (but this new screen is the same for all the table entries) but depending on which table cell you click on, that screen has different information posted on it.
What are the steps I need to do to complete this? I have my story board I'm just not sure how to put this all together with code
Thanks in advance!
Well your question is very broad and not very specific. Therefore it is not easy to give a helpful answer. What I would do:
Create a UITableViewController that holds your "table".
Define a UITableViewControllerDelegate for the UITableView that will be informed about UserInteractions (especially when the user
didSelect a certain row of the table).
Based on the specific row (that was selected) you can create a second UIViewController class the shows your intended information.
I can not show some code samples because your question is to broad and things depend on a lot of things (especially on the kind of data you want to show) and how you implement your UIElements on the ViewControllers in InterfaceBuilder.
And if you are not yet familiar with the concept of a UITableViewController and its Delegate, than you should find some tutorials first about that basic technique in developing iOS apps.
You want to use the master/detail pattern. I suggest doing a search on that.
In my iOS app, there are various Core Data entities that represent things like Appointments, Notes and Contacts.
I'd like the user to be able to edit selected attributes of each entity via a UITableView. Similar to the iOS Calendar app, when you click 'Edit', you're presented with a UITableView with editable values for Start Time, End Time, etc.
It's occurred to me that there could be a large amount of code re-use going on here, so I'm now considering creating a generic class, ManagedObjectEditorViewController that takes a managed object, displays selected attribute values within a table view, formatted according to their type, and allows them to be edited.
I can think of several neat ways of doing this, but before I spend a long time on this, I'm wondering if there's already something out there to accomplish this task? It seems like such a frequently used approach that I can't believe there isn't already some open source code out there.
Anyone heard of, or used anything similar?
I am about to do the same thing. Just started and works so far. A table that represents an NSManagedObject (Detail to a master view controller, has aspects of a master view controller itself.).
The whole table represents one NSManagedOjbect. There are fields and other controls that correspond with the simple properties.
There are to-one references where the referenced object is just displayed but can be changed.
There are to-one references which are editable NSObjects itself where 1 and exactly 1 of them exists.
There are to-many references which can be added, deleted and edited. Pretty similar to the calendar app or the address book app. (from a functional point of view. It looks different though).
For that I establish a delegate between the table cells and the view controller. This is mainly because I try to stick on the MVC pattern.
E.G. the cell serves as delegate for UITextViews, UITextFields or as target for Buttons etc.
The (Detail-) View controller which owns the NSManagedObject and all related objects serves as my delegate for the cells. It provides methods similar to IBActions to the cells so that the cell can 1) inform about the event and 2) hand over a related view, if required (I need that to display some popups accordingly) and 3) the object itself e.g. the object that is to be deleted or a person-object for which the data is to be fetched from the address book etc.
The View controller can then does its very own duties which is invoking other view controllers (Send Mail, select from Address Book, present a popover with options for the user to choose from, ...).
I just built that up yesterday evening. (It is a free-time project of mine).
I am happy so far but the concept is not really proven yet :) .
What is your current favorite approach?
I am building an iOS app that allows the user to browse a tableView, click a cell, then navigate deeper into another tableView using a navigationController.
I have a requirement to be able to move any of those items/cells to another place in the navigation stack. Right now my idea is, once the user selects the cells to move, to display a modal tableView that will allow the user to navigate through the same structure as before, but this time choose the location (by pressing and holding) to place those cells.
Are there any other UI ideas or clever programatic ideas that anyone might have that could be a better solution to this problem?
Perhaps take a look at how Apple's iOS Mail moves email messages between different mailboxes?
This also basically displays a modal view controller, but it flattens the hierarchy, by indenting nested items below their parent objects. You than just select the item that is the destination.
This of course only works if your hierarchy is not too deep, otherwise it's probably best to do it like you outlined it. The only thing I would perhaps recommend doing in addition, is to also have some sort of visual method (button?) to select the destination. A long press by itself might not be intuitive enough.
I have a TableView that is populated with data. When a user taps a row, a new TableView opens with more data to choose from. This data changes based on the row the user taps. Much like an application where the user chooses from a list of car makes, and then models. Is it possible to handle a situation like that with a TableViewController for the car makes, and 1 TableViewController for the models? Or would there be 1 TableViewController for the makes, and then a separate TableViewController for each make's set of models? I don't know the best way to approach this :-( I'm making an app of my own which is very similar in structure and I can't seem to find any documentation on how to accomplish this. Thanks in advance.
No, your models controller would serve for all makes. It would be passed an ID of the make requested and then fetch the necessary data accordingly.
Something like this might be of some help:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/TableView_iPhone/TableViewAndDataModel/TableViewAndDataModel.html
But I think the foundation of your problem is not necessarily to be found in a working example of your exact needs, but more in general tutorials for ios development.
Sorry if I have assumed you're just beginning ios development. I might be able to improve this answer if a more specific need is clarified (like how do I pass the ID to the model controller) etc
In general - this approach would utilize a separate UITableViewController for each data level and use a UINavigationController to handle the transitions between the different view controllers.
This process used to involve a lot of boilerplate code, but it is now aided by StoryBoards. You can setup each level in a storyboard and handle the transitions and setup data for the next view in performSegueWithIdentifier:.
You can see a tutorial here on using StoryBoards: http://kurrytran.blogspot.com/2011/10/ios-5-storyboard-uitableview-tutorial.html
You can see another Sample From Apple that demonstrates the data drill down with a Storyboard: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#samplecode/SimpleDrillDown/Introduction/Intro.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40007416-Intro-DontLinkElementID_2