Dismiss Modal UIViewController during handoff - ios

I'm trying to add handoff to my App. When my App is waken by Handoff I need to dismiss several ViewControllers to return to a MKMapView located in my view hierarchy.
My view hierarchy looks like:
+NavController
+--- MyMapViewController (contains the MKMapView where I want to go, top of the NavController)
+--- MyTabbarViewController (it's a tab bar with several views...)
+--- MyOverviewViewController (pushed on the stack of my NacController by a VC that displayed in MyTabbarViewController)
+--- MyDetailViewController (it's a modal view presented by MyOverviewController)
+--- MyChartViewController (it's a modal view presented by MyDetailViewController)
When the App receives the UserActivity the displayed view controller is "MyChartViewController".
To show the result of the User Activity I need to go to the MyMapViewController to display some information on the MapView.
My issue is to find a simple way to dismiss "MyChartViewController" and "MyDetailsViewController" before to call [navController popToRootViewControllerAnimated:TRUE];
I tried [navController.visibleViewController dismissViewControllerAnimated:FALSE completion:Nil]; but it dismisses only the MyChartViewController, why?
navController.visibleViewController is the MyDetailViewController.
The only solution I found is to call:
[MyChartViewController dismissViewControllerAnimated:FALSE completion:Nil];
AND
[navController.visibleViewController dismissViewControllerAnimated:FALSE completion:Nil];
My view hierarchy can be more complex or different depending on where the user is located in the App when the UserActivity is triggered. I'm expecting to find a simple solution that could be used for any situation. The main issue is to dismiss the stack of modals viewController.
I always want to go back to this MyMapViewController that is on the top of the NavController.
Any idea?
Thanks!

Please see below my simple solution. I have written a method that dismiss all ViewControllers displayed on the top of the visible view controller of my NavigationController.
When all "modal" viewControllers are dismissed I just pop the NavigationController to the root.
It seems it's working for all situations I have to manage in my App.
+(void) dismissModalAndPopToRoot:(UINavigationController*) navController {
if (navController.visibleViewController.parentViewController == Nil) {
// it's not a children of the NavController, so it's most probably a modal or several modals
UIViewController* currentViewController = navController.visibleViewController;
NSMutableArray* stackOfPresentedVC = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
while (currentViewController.presentedViewController != Nil) {
[stackOfPresentedVC addObject:currentViewController];
currentViewController = currentViewController.presentedViewController;
}
[stackOfPresentedVC addObject:currentViewController];
for (NSInteger i = (stackOfPresentedVC.count) - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
currentViewController = stackOfPresentedVC[i];
[currentViewController dismissViewControllerAnimated:FALSE completion:Nil];
}
}
[navController popToRootViewControllerAnimated:TRUE];
}

If the root view controller is always the MyMapViewController, then this task is kind of easy - just set the root view controller of the window again to be a UINavigationController that has the MyMapViewController as root.

I would set up and unwindSegue in the VC you want to unwind to, and then in the VC you want to dismiss I would check the conditions for the unWind in viewWillAppear: and call the unwind if it meets the conditions

Related

ViewController WILL NOT dismiss

WLINewPostViewController *newPostViewController = [[WLINewPostViewController alloc] initWithNibName:#"WLINewPostViewController" bundle:nil];
UINavigationController *newPostNavigationController = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:newPostViewController];
newPostNavigationController.navigationBar.translucent = NO;
[tabBarController presentViewController:newPostNavigationController animated:YES completion:nil];
So I just simply push a new UIViewController.
Then after it posts the server callback calls a method with this code from the WLINewPostViewController.m:
[self dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:^{
NSLog(#"Completed");
}];
[[self navigationController] popViewControllerAnimated:YES];
if (self == self.navigationController.visibleViewController){
NSLog(#"self = visibile");
}
if (self == self.presentingViewController.presentingViewController){
NSLog(#"self = presenting");
}
}
I tried a bunch of different things and none work.
I am relatively new to Xcode but after trying
[self dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion]
[self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:YES]
[self.navigationController.visibleViewController.presentedViewController dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:nil];
[self.navigationController dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:nil];
and every other possibility, I am officially stumped. The WLINewPostViewController still won't dismiss.
It Logs out "self = visible"
Let me illustrate what you are trying to do
You have a navigation controller with Controller A.
Here you are trying to present another Controller B from Controller A.
Now when you get a callback from the server, you should call dismissViewControllerAnimated from Controller B to dismiss itself.
So after dismissViewControllerAnimated:completion: method call, the Controller B will be dismissed and Controller A will be shown automatically. Now you do not need to call popViewControllerAnimated: in completion block again as there is no other Controller in navigation controller to load.
If you have different use case, let me know I can provide solution.
You are presenting a view over navigationbar instead of pushing it over navigationbar.
When push you pop. When you present you dismiss. So instead of popViewControllerAnimated you need to use dismissViewControllerAnimated:completion
dismiss behaves differently depending on the receiver. From the docs:
The presenting view controller is responsible for dismissing the view controller it presented. If you call this method on the presented view controller itself, it automatically forwards the message to the presenting view controller.
If you present several view controllers in succession, thus building a stack of presented view controllers, calling this method on a view controller lower in the stack dismisses its immediate child view controller and all view controllers above that child on the stack. When this happens, only the top-most view is dismissed in an animated fashion; any intermediate view controllers are simply removed from the stack. The top-most view is dismissed using its modal transition style, which may differ from the styles used by other view controllers lower in the stack.
In short, if the vc on top calls it on itself, it dismisses itself. Anywhere else on the stack dismisses to that point, animating only the topmost vc.
What's extra confusing (for you and many others) is that the navigation vc has a stack too, and your problem is complicated further by presenting an navigation vc atop a tab-bar vc.
So what to do? The question is unclear about which vc is the receiver in the posted code (who is self in that snippet?). The text implies that self is a vc on the stack of the presented navigation vc, like...
TabBarVC --- presents ---> NavVC
| |
| --- viewControllers stack = rootVC, vc1
|
---> viewControllers for each tab
... and it's root or vc1 that wants to dismiss. If I'm right about that, then, given the docs, the solution is clear:
[self.navigationController dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:^{}];
will put us back on the tabbar vc on whatever tab was visible when we did the present.

Dismissing a ViewController lower in the stack does not behave as expected

I'm building a complex app that has kind of a branch in the middle.
At some point in the app, a particular UIViewController is presented, we'll call it mainViewController (shortened mainVC).
The mainVC presents another view controller, by code, using the following code (I strip out parts of it for privacy reasons):
UIStoryboard *storyboard = [UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:#"SecondaryStoryboard" bundle:secondaryBundle];
SecondViewController *secondVC = [storyboard instantiateInitialViewController];
[self presentViewController:secondVC animated:YES completion:nil];
So the secondVC will later present another view controller, called thirdVC. This is done using a custom segue, set in the storyboard used in the code above, which code looks like this:
#implementation VCCustomPushSegue
- (void)perform {
UIView *sourceView = ((UIViewController *)self.sourceViewController).view;
UIView *destinationView = ((UIViewController *)self.destinationViewController).view;
UIWindow *window = [[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate] window];
destinationView.center = CGPointMake(sourceView.center.x + sourceView.frame.size.width, destinationView.center.y);
[window insertSubview:destinationView aboveSubview:sourceView];
[UIView animateWithDuration:0.4
animations:^{
destinationView.center = CGPointMake(sourceView.center.x, destinationView.center.y);
sourceView.center = CGPointMake(0 - sourceView.center.x, destinationView.center.y);
}
completion:^(BOOL finished){
[self.sourceViewController presentViewController:self.destinationViewController animated:NO completion:nil];
}];
}
#end
As you can see this segue presents the destination view controller modally (by the use of presentViewController:) with a custom animation (a slide from right to left).
So basically up to here everything is fine. I present the secondVC with a classic modal animation (slide up from bottom) and present the thirdVC with my custom transition.
But when I want to dismiss the thirdVC, what I want is to go back directly to the mainVC. So I call the following from the thirdVC :
self.modalTransitionStyle = UIModalTransitionStyleCoverVertical;
[self.presentingViewController.presentingViewController dismissViewControllerAnimated:_animate completion:nil];
That way, I'm calling dismissViewControllerAnimated: directly on mainVC (referenced by self.presentingViewController.presentingViewController), and I'm expecting the thirdVC to be dismissed with an animation, and the secondVC to just disappear without animation.
As Apple says in the UIViewController Class Documentation:
The presenting view controller is responsible for dismissing the view
controller it presented. If you call this method on the presented view
controller itself, it automatically forwards the message to the
presenting view controller.
If you present several view controllers in succession, thus building a
stack of presented view controllers, calling this method on a view
controller lower in the stack dismisses its immediate child view
controller and all view controllers above that child on the stack.
When this happens, only the top-most view is dismissed in an animated
fashion; any intermediate view controllers are simply removed from the
stack. The top-most view is dismissed using its modal transition
style, which may differ from the styles used by other view controllers
lower in the stack.
The issue is that it's not what happens. In my scenario, the thirdVC disappears, and shows the secondVC being dismissed with the classic modal slide to bottom animation.
What am I doing wrong ?
Edit :
So #codeFi's answer is probably working in a classic project, but the problem here is that I'm working on a framework. So mainVC would be in a client app, and the secondVC and thirdVC are in my framework, in a separate storyboard. I don't have access to mainVC in any other way than a reference to it in my code, so unwind segues are unfortunately not an option here.
I've been having this exact same issue, and I've managed to visually work around it by adding a snapshot of the screen as a subview to secondVC.view, like so:
if (self.presentedViewController.presentedViewController) {
[self.presentedViewController.view addSubview:[[UIScreen mainScreen] snapshotViewAfterScreenUpdates:NO]];
}
[self dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:nil];
Not pretty, but it seems to be working.
NOTE: if your secondVC has a navigation bar, you will need to hide the navigation bar in between snapshotting the screen and adding the snapshot as a subview to secondVC, as otherwise the snapshot will appear below the navigation bar, thus seemingly displaying a double navigation bar during the dismissal animation. Code:
if (self.presentedViewController.presentedViewController) {
UIView *snapshot = [[UIScreen mainScreen] snapshotViewAfterScreenUpdates:NO];
[self.presentedViewController.navigationController setNavigationBarHidden:YES animated:NO];
[self.presentedViewController.view addSubview:snapshot];
}
[self dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:nil];
I had the same issue and I've fixed it by using UnwindSegues.
Basically, all you have to do is add an IBAction Unwind Segue method in the ViewController that you want to segue to and then connect in IB the Exit action to your Unwind Segue method.
Example:
Let's say you have three ViewControllers (VC1, VC2, VC3) and you want to go from VC3 to VC1.
Step 1
Add a method to VC1 like the following:
- (IBAction)unwindToVC1:(UIStoryboardSegue*)sender
{
}
Step 2
Go in Interface Builder to VC3 and select it. Then CTRL-drag from your VC icon to Exit icon and select the method you've just added in VC1.
Step 3
While still in IB and with VC3 selected, select your Unwind Segue and in the Attributes Inspector add a Segue Identifier.
Step 4
Go to VC3 where you need to perform your segue (or dismiss the VC) and add the following:
[self performSegueWithIdentifier:#"VC1Segue" sender:self];

How to switch between view controllers and get rid of the previous one

In android, switching between activities, is fairly straightforward
you call
Intent intent = new Intent(this,NextActivity.class); <- define the next activity
startActivity(intent); <- start the next activity
finish(); < -get rid of the current activity
now in iOS i know how to do this:
UIViewController *nextviewcontroller = [[UIViewController alloc]initWithNibName:#"nextvc" bundle:nil];
[self presentViewcontroller:nextviewcontroller animated:YES completion:nil];
How do I get rid of the current view controller? so that currentviewcontroller dies after presenting nextviewcontroller ?
[self dismissViewController:YES]; doesnt seem to do the trick
the lifecycle methods viewWillDisappear and viewDidDisappear are called even if I don't call [self dismissViewController:YES];
i want "currentviewcontroller" to be removed from the memory, and from the viewcontroller stack, so that clicking "back" in "nextviewcontroller" will go to some thirdviewcontroller that was before currentviewcontroller
In iOS is different, since there's no concept of Activity and everything is more focused on the app itself (in Android you can mix activities from different apps). Therefore, there's no concept of "view controller stack".
The most similar concept is the "navigation stack" of navigation controllers, where you actually push and pop new view controller into some kind of linear navigation. A navigation bar is automatically created and populated with back buttons.
presentViewController will show your view controller modally upon the current one, but you can't thrash the presenting one since it's holding and containing ("defining context") the new one.
If you use a navigation controller for your navigation hierarchy (I don't know if you can), you can override the back button and use something like
UIViewController * prev = self.navigationController.viewControllers[self.navigationController.viewControllers.count -2 ]
[self.navigationController popToViewController:prev animated:YES]
With a modal view controller, you may try something like (I haven't tried but it may work)
[self.presentingViewController.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:YES]
You should write one of these code into the target action of your close button.
iOS doesn't maintain a global stack of controllers in the way that Android does. Each app shows a controller at its root, and that one is responsible for showing the other controllers in the app. Controllers can display other controllers modally using presentViewcontroller:animated:completion: but the presenting controller remains underneath the presented one.
If your current controller is the root controller, then instead of using presentViewcontroller:animated:completion: you'd just do this:
self.view.window.rootViewController = nextViewController;
It's very common for the root controller to be a UINavigationController, which does manage a stack of controllers. If that is the case, and if your current controller is at the top of the stack, you'd do this:
[self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:NO];
[self.navigationController pushViewController:nextViewController animated:YES];
If your setup is different, you'd do something different; it's hard to say what without knowing more. But it's most likely that you'd be in the UINavigationController case.
In the viewDidAppear of your nextviewcontroller you could add :
-(void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated{
[super viewDidAppear:animated];
NSArray *controllers = self.navigationController.viewControllers;
NSMutableArray *newViewControllers = [NSMutableArray arrayWithArray:controllers];
[newViewControllers removeObjectAtIndex:[controllers count]-2];
self.navigationController.viewControllers = newViewControllers;
}
There is nothing available like this in iOS but you can achieve it doing something like below
NSArray *viewControllers=[self.navigationController viewControllers];
NSMutableArray *newControllers=[[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
for(int i=[viewControllers indexOfObject:self];i<viewControllers.count;i++){
[newControllers addObject:[viewControllers objectAtIndex:i]];
}
[self.navigationController setViewControllers:[[NSArray alloc] initWithArray:newControllers]];
I have tried the method of storing all the view controllers in an array but it didn't work for me . When you try popViewController it will move to the View Controller which is last in the stack.
You can make 2 navigation controllers and switch between them and also switch between the view controllers of a particular Navigation Controller.
For eg.
You can switch between 2 Navigation Controller using the following code:
FirstNavController *fisrtView=[storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:#"firstnavcontroller"];
self.window.rootViewController = firstView;
}else{
SecondNavController *secondView=[storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:#"loginnavcontroller"];
self.window.rootViewController = secondView;
}
If your FirstNavController has 2 ViewControllers then you can switch between them using pushViewController
SecondViewController *sc = [self.storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:#"secondviewcontroller"];
[[self navigationController] pushViewController:sc animated:YES];
and popViewController
[self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:YES];

How to dismiss view controllers at any time (even during transitions) or when it is safe to dismiss a view controller ?

I have an iOS app that has a connection to a server. If we get disconnected, I want to be able to dismiss the top view controllers to get back to a "connecting to server" view controller. The problem is that a disconnection can occur at any time, including during a transition between view controllers.
The view controller hierarchy is like so:
ConnectingToServerViewController
SignInViewController
MainAppViewController
Other view controllers
When a disconnection is detected I want the view hierarchy to collapse back to:
ConnectingToServerViewController
So when a disconnection is detected, this method is called on the ConnectingToServerViewController to dismiss anything that it has presented and go back to attempting to connect to server:
- (void)restartSession
{
if (self.presentedViewController) {
[self dismissViewControllerAnimated:NO completion:nil];
}
}
However, if I try to dismiss while a view transition is occurring, I get errors such as
*** Assertion failure in -[UIWindowController transition:fromViewController:toViewController:target:didEndSelector:], /SourceCache/UIKit/UIKit-2380.17/UIWindowController.m:211
attempt to dismiss modal view controller whose view does not currently appear. self = <YYYYYViewController: 0x2089c8a0> modalViewController = <XXXXXViewController: 0x208e6610>
attempt to dismiss modal view controller whose view does not currently appear. self = <WWWWWWViewController: 0x1fd9e990> modalViewController = <YYYYYViewController: 0x2089c8a0>
The first of which will crash the app, the second will just not dismiss anything and continue to show the current presented view controller.
Thoughts:
delays won't work since we don't know when to start the delay
is there a way to track when view transitions complete?
should all view controllers override willAppear, didAppear and alert the app when it is safe to dismiss?
perhaps instead of dismiss, I should just set a new root view controller?
I've made sure that all overridden view(will|did)(dis)?appear methods call the appropriate super method.
Any solution that requires all view controllers to override view(did|will)appear methods to track state sounds like it could cause issues if we forget to set the base class for a new view controller.
Do something like this. Try this out once,
UIViewController *controller = self.presentingViewController; //THIS LINE IS IMP
[self dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES
completion:^{
[controller presentViewController:adminViewController animated:YES completion:nil];
adminViewController.view.superview.frame = CGRectMake(1024/2 - 400, 768/2 - 280, 800 , 560);//it's important to do this after
[adminViewController release];
}];
One way that has worked for me is to assign a new view controller to the root view controller. That way, views in the old hierarchy can animate and transition to their hearts content while we have new controllers.
eg
- (void)restartSession
{
UIStoryboard *storyboard = [UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:#"MainStoryboard" bundle:nil];
ConnectingToServerViewController *vc = [storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:#"ConnectingToServerViewController"];
vc.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationFullScreen;
[UIApplication sharedApplication].delegate.window.rootViewController = vc;
}
I'm not sure if I'm aware of all the downsides to this though. Perhaps the old view controllers will never get freed because of a dangling strong reference? We're no longer reusing ConnectingToServerViewController, we have to recreate that each time.
I based the code on what I saw in this answer for Managing and dismissing Multiple View Controllers in iOS.
It seems like you are trying to dismiss the view controller when it is not currently on screen. To check if it is on screen you could use:
if (self.presentedViewController.view.window)
{
[self dismissViewControllerAnimated:NO completion:nil];
}
else
{
self.presentedViewController = nil;
}
I will answer in order.
is there a way to track when view transitions complete?
You could try with the UINavigationControllerDelegate (if you are using one of those). Other approach could be using a custom animator.
should all view controllers override willAppear, didAppear and alert the app when it is safe to dismiss?
That's an option. You are free to do it if you want. Another option is not to do that. I think that container view controllers such as navigation controller has better approaches.
I should just set a new root view controller?
I would suggest to do the opposite. I would set the SignInViewController / MainAppViewController as the root flow, and present modally ConnectingToServerViewController on demand. In my opinion that's a healthier approach.
Hope it helps.

ViewDidAppear not called in main view when modal view is presented over a popover

I'm trying to use a popover as an intermediary menu between my main view and a modal view controller. I can successfully present the Modal view controller from the popover by using the following code:
UIStoryboard *storyboardiPad = [UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:#"MainStoryboard_iPad" bundle:nil];
cbwEditControlPanel *editCP = [storyboardiPad instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:#"EditCP"];
UINavigationController *nav = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:editCP];
[nav setToolbarHidden:NO];
[nav setModalPresentationStyle:UIModalPresentationFullScreen];
[nav setModalTransitionStyle:UIModalTransitionStyleCoverVertical];
[self presentViewController:nav animated:YES completion:nil];
self.modalInPopover = NO;
The problem I'm running into is that when the EditCP modal view controller is dismissed, the main view controller never updates. I have a pagecontroller on the main view that should be updated to reflect the number of pages as set in the EditCP modal view controller, but for some reason the modal view controller being called from the popover prevents the main view controller from updating the pagecontroller. I've even tried calling the main view's "View Will Appear" method from the popover or modal view when they are dismissed, but even if the 'viewWillAppear' method is called the pageController will not update!
Any ideas what is preventing the pageController from updating? I even passed a reference to the pagecontroller to the modal view and tried to update it there, but it seems that from the time the popover is presented until it is dismissed, I cannot update the number of pages on the PageController.
Thank you!
So this is an old question but I also came across a similar problem recently when using a popover. My solution was to use an unwind segue to trigger my parent view to perform some action. In my case my parent view contains contact information and the popover contains a list of cites. All I wanted to do was to have the parent view update with the new city once the user selected it from the popover. So in my parent view I create my unwind function as follows:
In the .h:
- (IBAction)unwindToContactTVC:(UIStoryboardSegue *)unwindSegue;
In the .m:
- (IBAction)unwindToContactTVC:(UIStoryboardSegue *)unwindSegue
{
[self updateTableForOffice];
}
In the above .m file is where you would have the logic to do whatever it is you want to in the parent view. To connect this unwind segue go to the child view in the storyboard and control drag from the view icon to the exit icon. You should see a pop up with the name of your unwind segue.
Finally, give that unwind segue a name and then in the child controller in the viewWillDisappear() function call the segue as follows:
- (void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated
{
[self performSegueWithIdentifier:#"unwind-to-contact-tvc" sender:self];
}
I hope that helps. If someone has a better solution let me know.
Well, I half solved the problem. The only way to get an update function when the popover disappeared was to stop using Storyboards and programmatically present the popover, using the main view as the delegate. I then was able to update correctly inside the popoverControllerDidDismissPopover method.
However, I am still interested in finding a way to update the pageControl when the modal is dismissed, before the popover is dismissed.

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