iOS Play multiple music when switching between sidebar - ios

Question

Good day.
I am developing an app to play multiple musics but I'm stuck where the music stop when I select share at the sidebar (I want the music to continue to play because user didn't pause it)
I am using api from RESideMenu and I suspect initRootController is the cause to made the music stop.
Someone suggested me to put the music at the appDelegate because the music might be deallocated when it switch view controller. However, I think that this is not a good way to do as I will later add on more musics with different image background and the architecture of the app will be very messy as I stock each music in ThemeObject and call the music in cafeViewController.
Is there a better way to do this?
This is my code >>> source.

Answer 1

I've check your repo and the sound seems to happen inside your ThemeObject and the only place where you create and link one of those is inside your CafeViewController. So every time the CafeViewController gets unloaded this will remove the only reference to your ThemeObject and it will be garbage collected. To check if the CafeViewController gets unloaded you could put a breakpoint inside this method:
- (void)dealloc {
// Just a line where you can put your breakpoint
}
The advice to put it inside the AppDelegate isn't completely backwards as indeed you would be better off to put it inside an object that is around all of the time. However to abuse AppDelegate as a dumping ground for all your centralised features is a bad practice. For simple apps you might be better off with a Singleton approach, where you always have one instance of an object and that object maintains itself during the existence of your application.
This is what a typical singleton looks like:
#interface ThemeManager : NSObject
#property NSArray *themes;
+ (id)sharedManager;
// Add other methods here
#end
#implementation ThemeManager
+ (id)sharedInstance {
static ThemeManager *sharedInstance = nil;
static dispatch_once_t onceToken;
dispatch_once(&onceToken, ^{
sharedInstance = [[self alloc] init];
});
return sharedInstance;
}
- (id)init {
if (self = [super init]) {
ThemeObject *cafeTheme = [[ThemeObject alloc] initWithBackgroundImg:#"cafeBG.png" audio:#"cafeAudio"];
ThemeObject *cafeTheme1 = [[ThemeObject alloc] initWithBackgroundImg:#"cafeBG.png" audio:#"cafeAudio"];
// Create as much as you need in the same way
self.themes = #[cafeTheme, cafeTheme1]; // And add them to the array of themes
}
return self;
}
// Implement other methods
#end
So you never init directly but always ask for the shared instance by calling something like
MusicManager *manager = [MusicManager sharedInstance];
ThemeObject *firstTheme = (ThemeObject *) [manager.themes firstObject];
[firstTheme setAudioPlay];
You can start, pause, stop and change songs with this central object without worrying about the lifecycle of your ViewControllers. You also can start a song from for example CafeViewController and you can stop the song CafeViewController started from the HotelViewController when you start the Hotel song.