iOS Rotation with UITabBarController - switch controller out completely and smoothly - ios

Question

I have an iOS application and the main entry point into the storyboard is a Tabbar with with tabs. I want to support rotation but in landscape mode, each tab will look drastically different to the point I need to change the views out with others from the storyboard. At first though, I considered just switching out the entire tab bar controller when the user rotates, but I don't see how that might be accomplished. So I have two options that I can't seem to get anywhere with.
Switch each view with a segue somehow into it's landscape alternative and back. I've seen this done easily with modal views, but not with UITabbar before.
Switch out the entire tab bar somehow from the delegate so that I just have two completely separate section of my storyboard that are alike except one path is portrait and the other is landscape.
Does anyone have anything similar they are doing and could throw me a bone?

Answer 1

You can create a custom class for both view controllers, link them together with segoes, and then use didRotateFromInterfaceOrientation: to trigger the segues from code.
Create a class for your VC's. Add this code to the .m file:
- (void)didRotateFromInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)fromInterfaceOrientation
{
if (fromInterfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft || fromInterfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight) {
[self performSegueWithIdentifier:#"rotateToPortrait" sender:nil];
} else {
[self performSegueWithIdentifier:#"rotateToLandscape" sender:nil];
}
}
And in your storyboard, create segues between the two views. Make their identifiers "rotateToPortrait" and "rotateToLandscape", respectively. The code you added will switch the views whenever the device is rotated.
EDIT: I think I misunderstood the question. If you want to move views around, change their size, etc. when the screen is rotated, while keeping the same navigation/tab bar state, then you can do something like this in the didRotateFromInterfaceOrientation method:
if (fromInterfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft || fromInterfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight) {
myView.frame.origin.x = aNumber;
myView.frame.size.width = anotherNumber;
// Changing the layout of the views here by resetting their origins and sizes.
// This code is called when rotated from portrait to landscape.
} else {
// Do the same thing as above, but this one handles rotation from landscape to portrait.
}