Pass values to previous view controller in a navigationviewcontroller stack - ios

In UINavigationViewController, if I wanna pass values from one controller to next, just call - (void) prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender , but what should I do if I wanna pass values from one viewController to previous viewController

I remember running across this same issue a few projects back. I can't find the my code to answer this question, but I did find a few tutorials.
http://prateekvjoshi.com/2014/02/16/ios-app-passing-data-between-view-controllers/
http://www.infragistics.com/community/blogs/torrey-betts/archive/2014/05/29/passing-data-between-view-controllers-ios-obj-c.aspx

and hence the concept of delegate came forth from segues.
Basically Segues are transition from one view to another but the child view is over the parent view, (inside a stack) so the parent view is still loaded.
So if u put segues everywhere and pass values between them then objects will keep on be creating and stored inside a stack and thus the cycle carries on.
So delegates was introduced.
Delegate is a method by which a child view controller(the later one) sends information using the inbuild delegate methods or self created protocol methods to the Previous view controller(the first one).
Here the one sending the information(later view) declares a delegate object, and a delegate method.
Which is then implemented by the recieving class(first view). So even after the later view is popped from the stack, the information is sent back to the root view by the delegate method.
Go through the documentation, its given in a more appropriate way
Hope this helps

Set previous view controller as delegate of current view controller and pass any values you want. This is standard approach.

Related

Code in viewDidLoad runs every time it is called

Hi all I am doing a course in Udemy, and the code calls for placing code in the viewDidLoad function as shown below:
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
placesArray.append(["name":"Taj Mahal", "lat":"27.175607", "lon":"78.042112"])
}
The array append should only run once, however, when I segue to another viewController and come back, it runs the code to append again. So I now have an array with 2 rows, both of which are Taj Mahal.
I thought that the viewDidLoad function only runs code once?
Is there a way around this?
Thanks.
Addendum:
I am using Swift, so I don't see any alloc and init while creating and launching the viewController. And weird as it sounds, the video tutorial has it working in the viewDidLoad and the trainer is using the storyboard to segue from the initial table view controller to a map view on a view controller and just has a back button on the map view that segue's back to the table view controller via the storyboard as well. - Could be because I have the latest version of the Swift language and the trainer was using an earlier version, (cause I noticed some slight differences in coding earlier) but you never know. Either way whenever he touches the back button it does not run the append code anymore.
I am trying to get in contact with the trainer as some of the suggestions here, though they are good don't seem to work.
I will put the solution in here once I get in contact with the trainer.
The viewDidLoad method is called when your view controller's view finishes loading. The view will load when a view controller's view property is nil and something attempts to access it.
UIViewController *myVC = [[UIViewController alloc] init];
UIView *aView = myVC.view; // this loads myVC's view; viewDidLoad is called when it completes loading.
If the view has unloaded (usually due to memory limitations), it will be called when the view property is next accessed.
Manipulation of data sets should generally not be done within view methods. Consider moving this to the init of the view controller (or to a different "datasource" class).
I suppose you are trying to do data initialisation in viewDidLoad. If there is no other operation on placesArray before viewDidLoad, then instead of append, what about setting the placesArray directly:
placesArray = ["name":"Taj Mahal", "lat":"27.175607", "lon":"78.042112"]
Then even if your view is unloaded for some reasons. Taj Mahal will still be added once only.
viewDidLoad is called whenever the view controller's view property is set. When does this happen? It depends on how the view controller is contained:
UINavigationController
- View Controller views are loaded as they are added to the navigation stack and "unloaded" (although the viewDidUnload method is deprecated) as they are removed.
UITabBarController
- View Controller views are loaded as they are added to the tab bar regardless of whether they are on screen or not. They stay loaded as you change from tab to tab.
Depending on your needs and use case, you can create your own view controller container that does what you need. Checkout the Apple docs on the proper way to do this:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/featuredarticles/ViewControllerPGforiPhoneOS/CreatingCustomContainerViewControllers/CreatingCustomContainerViewControllers.html

How to tell when my ViewController becomes top of stack again?

When using a UINavigationController, when the user is "diving in deeper" (pushing yet another controller on the stack), I have an opportunity to handle that in
-(void)prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender
But how do I handle the opposite? When the user presses the back button, and a controller becomes the top controller again, I'd like it to potentially update some state because the controllers on the stack may have changed some things I want to reflect in the now visible controller.
Or, by analog, when I use modal segues to present new controllers, I get to pick a method that is called as an unwind segue when the presented controller exits. How can I do the same with navigation stack managed controllers?
(feel free to put a better title on this)
It turns out that you can disambiguate based on the response to isMovingToParentViewController. If it is YES your controller has just been placed topmost on the stack. If it is NO, your controller is returning to topmost, another push on top of it being popped. Example:
-(void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated{
if (self.isMovingToParentViewController == NO) { // returning from even higher controller
[self updateForChangesThatMayHaveHappenedInSubController];
}
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
}
You can use the viewWillAppear: method to update the ui before the view becomes visible. If you want to pass data back up the chain, you should assign yourself as the delegate to your child and call an update function on the delegate before popping.
To have many clients (viewControllers in this case) update their views in response to a change of some shared data, you should use NSNotifications, or you should have the viewControllers observe certain values on the shared data-object (KVO).
ViewController should be as autistic as possible, meaning that they know all about the interface of downstream viewControllers, but have absolutely no idea about what viewController is upstream (talking back to an upstream viewController is usually done through delegation, and only to signal events that might indicate some change in viewController hierarchy, not in shared data state).
Checkout out the stanford lectures by Paul Hegarty, he explains this much better then I can.

prepareForSegue not called in embedded segue

I have a table view controller embedded in a container in a view controller.
In both the view and table view controllers prepareForSegue method I put NSLog(#"name of the controller")
I see a log for the view controller but not the table view controller. Shouldn't I also see the nslog for my table view's prepareForSegue?
Exactly - as Greg explains, the embed type of segue is
only called during setup!
This is very confusing. You could say that
"prepareForSegue" is A REALLY BAD NAME!
the name "prepare for segue" only makes sense in the (rare!) case where you are actually "segueing" from one scene to another
In an iOS app container views are commonplace, you have them everywhere, whereas you rarely use an actual "scene segue".
So really, "prepareForSegue" should be called something like:
"Hey, we're setting up all your container views -- you can grab any info you need at this time! Oh, if you happen to be doing a scene segue, you can use this also!"
what about:
containerViewBeingSetUpOhAndAlsoPrepareForSegueIfYouHappenToBeDoingThat:
That's a bit long, but clearer!
It's just one of those weird things about iOS that you have to know, but is never explained anywhere.
Here's a full explanation of using container views for beginners https://stackoverflow.com/a/23403979/294884
In Your Log Frame View Controller prepareForSegue will be called directly after initWithCoder: to prepare your TableViewController. I cannot see your connection between table view controller and another view (view on the right) but I believe it will be called when you hit the row.
//EXTENDED
The other thing could be that you haven't add UINavigationController on the view hierarchy and you set up your segue style to 'push'. Try change style of your segue to 'modal' in attribute inspector.
Hope this help.
Other than what's already discussed, you should make sure you aren't ignoring segue identifier in following delegate call.
- (BOOL)shouldPerformSegueWithIdentifier:(NSString *)identifier sender:(id)sender

Understanding/clarifying view controller syntax

I've been looking at view controllers for a few days now (searching xcode help, google and stack overflow), and I think I have some understanding of it, but not a lot.
I have some code, that I have trouble understanding.
So here I have the following code I found in the book I'm reading, and I'm not sure If I understand it correctly.
-(void)prepareForSegue(UIStoryboardsegue *)segue sender:(id)sender{
((ViewController2 *)segue.destinationViewController).delegate = self;
}
First, I have no idea why we typecast to our second view controller(viewController2) here.
I think I get the rest though, we take the method's segue parameter (which holds information about the view controllers involved in the segue), and we access the destinationViewController(meaning that we want to access the view controller that we are going to). We then set the delegate property of the destination view controller to self. I believe we set the delegate property to self, because we want to send messages to a delegate in the view controller we're going to.
Heres the last one I don't get:
In the header file:
#property (weak, nonatomic)id delegate;
In the implementation file: (the controllerVisisble property is a boolean, and is changed to YES when the user hits a button to perform a manual segue to the second view controller, which is this one)
-(void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated{
[super viewWillDisappear:animated];
((ViewController *)self.delegate).controllerrVisisble=NO;
}
Heres what I think this does: the viewWillDisappear method is called when a view is closing/removed.
I'm not quite sure about [super viewWillDisappear:animated], but I'm guessing that it gives an animation when the view disappears?However, I remove that line, and my dismissViewControllerAnimated method still gives an animation when the view controller is dismissed.
Here's the part that really confuses me. We need to access the first view controllers dateChooserVisible property somehow, to set it to NO, so we can access the second view controller again through our button. But, I don't understand why we have to typecast (viewController *), and type in self.delegate. Nor, do I understand why we created a property called delegate in the header file, to use here.
A lot of these questions are more generic than just within the context of view controllers.
[super methodName] calls the superclasses implementation of the method named methodName. In your case, Apple has written some code (that we don't have access to) in UIViewController's viewWillDisappear: method. ALWAYS call super when overriding a method from a superclass.
Note that viewWillDisappear: is just callback triggered whenever the view is set to disappear. My guess is that the super implementation of this method forwards this callback down to child view controllers, especially in the case of standard container classes like UINavigationController and UITabBarController.
The type casting really doesn't seem necessary, you can always call methods without compiler errors/warnings if the receiver is either type id or provides a declaration for the called method in its #interface.
As far as the delegates go, protocols and delegation are a major part of Objective-C, and widely used in Apple's APIs. This link might help you understand how they work; it helped me immensely.

Getting data from popped view controller to parent view controller

I have a problem where I am able to pass all data to a push view controller using
[self performSegueWithIdentifier:#"Expense" sender: self];
and
-(void)prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender
However I do not know how to get back data when the view controller is popped out. I have a couple of arrays that need to be passed from a popped view controller to parent view controller.
Create a class to serve as the data model for your application and have it include the arrays you need to pass around. Create an object of that class in your first controller, share it with the second controller during prepareForSegue:, let the second controller update it, and read the new values when the parent's view appears again.
You should use segues to pass data forward and Delegate Methods to send data back in your navigation stack. That is the recommended approach. I answered a similar question earlier. Although the question may sound different, the underlying solution should work in your case as well.

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