Adding View Programmatically from ViewController super class doesn't show in front - ios

Question

I have a BaseViewController that my UIViewControllers extend so i can have explicit functions that i dont need to rewrite. Something i would like would be a functions such as self.showSpinner() and the viewController would show the spinner
My Code looks like this
class BaseViewController: UIViewController {
var actvIndicator : UIActivityIndicatorView!
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
self.actvIndicator = UIActivityIndicatorView(activityIndicatorStyle: .WhiteLarge)
self.actvIndicator.color = UIColor.blackColor()
self.actvIndicator.backgroundColor = UIColor.blackColor()
self.actvIndicator.frame = CGRectMake(self.view.frame.size.width / 2, self.view.frame.size.height / 2, 100, 100);
self.actvIndicator.center = self.view.center
self.actvIndicator .startAnimating()
self.view.addSubview(self.actvIndicator)
self.actvIndicator.bringSubviewToFront(self.view)
self.edgesForExtendedLayout = UIRectEdge.None
self.navigationController?.navigationBar.translucent = false
}
func showSpinner(){
self.actvIndicator.startAnimating()
}
func hideSpinner(){
self.actvIndicator.stopAnimating()
}
}
And my viewcontrollers looks like this
class MyProjectViewController: BaseViewController {
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
self.showSpinner()
}
}
MyProjectViewController have UITableView that fills the entire screen. When i set tblProjects.alpha = 0 i can see the spinner. But i want it in the front.
i also tried self.view.bringSubviewToFront(self.actvIndicator)
What am i missing?

Answer 1

A couple quick notes before I get into what I think your problem is:
When you add a subview it is automatically added to the top layer, no need for the bringSubviewToFront: in viewDidLoad: (which is being used wrong anyway).
You should not set view frames in viewDidLoad: (e.g. centering a view). Frames are not setup yet, so you should move that to viewWillAppear: or some other variant.
Now your issue is most likely a view hierarchy problem (further confirmed by your comment) and thus can probably be fixed by pushing the spinner to the front every time you want it to be shown, like:
func showSpinner() {
self.view.bringSubviewToFront(self.actvIndicator)
self.actvIndicator.startAnimating()
}

Answer 2

The problem here stands on the fact that table view is draw after you are calling self.view.bringSubviewToFront(self.actvIndicator). A possible workaround for this is to call bringSubviewToFront when showing the spinner
func showSpinner(){
self.view.bringSubviewToFront(self.actvIndicator)
self.actvIndicator.startAnimating()
}