UIRefreshControl Inside of UITableView Causing App to Freeze on Rotation - iOS 6+ - ios

Ok StackOverflow People...I've got a very interesting problem that I've been trying to solve for days and can't figure out so I need some major help. This will most likely be a very lengthy description but please bear with me and thank you deeply in advance for reading all of this because the more words I have, the clearer I can describe the full picture to you all. I will do my absolute best to be as terse and coherent as I can possibly be. Please let me know wherever I fall short.
Here's the context of my problem: I'm using Storyboards for my iOS app and for a particular nav tab in my app, I had to create two separate scenes for both the Portrait and Landscape orientations. The reason for doing this (instead of say, using Autolayout), is because within this said tab, there are visual elements (table views, web views, etc.) that are laid out differently depending on the orientation and it was a lot easier to create a separate orientation scene to handle this change in the UI instead of doing it programmatically -- (it's also just a lot easier to understand and cleaner code-wise). So the take away to keep in mind from all of this is that these two separate Portrait and Landscape scenes represent the SAME TAB in my app. (Side Note: these scenes were made in the IB of course)
Now the visual elements that I mentioned in the UI earlier -- going deeper, they are all containers for different UIViewControllers. I sandboxed everything in the app and pretty much have a 1-to-1 relationship for all things so these containers will map to my subclassed UIViewControllers that I've created for their specific purposes -- but it's here that the first caveat of my problem arises. Here's a practical example for a clearer picture, I have one UIViewController that contains a UITableView called MXSAnnouncementsViewController and this same view controller exists in both the Landscape and Portrait scenes. I did not create an explicit Portrait or Landscape VERSION of that view controller but instead, have the controller keep track of two IBOutlet properties (tableViewLandscape and tableViewPortrait) that point to the orientation-specific UITableViews -- and this approach works perfectly fine. Moreover in my MXSAnnouncementsViewController, I have a local property called tableView that abstracts the orientation-specific table views. It gets set within viewDidLoad which you can see below:
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
if (self.tableViewPortrait) {
self.tableView = self.tableViewPortrait;
} else {
self.tableView = self.tableViewLandscape;
}
[self.tableView setDelegate:self];
[self.tableView setDataSource:self];
if (![MXSAnnouncementManager sharedAnnouncementManager].latestAnnouncements) {
[MXSAnnouncementManager loadModel:#"MXSAnnouncementGroupAllAnnouncements" withBlock:^(id model, NSError *error) {
if (!error) {
self.arrayLatestAnnouncements = [MXSAnnouncementManager sharedAnnouncementManager].latestAnnouncements;
[self.tableView reloadData];
} else {
// show some error msg
}
}];
} else {
self.arrayLatestAnnouncements = [MXSAnnouncementManager sharedAnnouncementManager].latestAnnouncements;
}
[self setupPullToRefresh];
}
Whenever I'm in the tab, one of the two orientation-specific IBOutlets is always active and has an address in memory while the other is nil. Whenever I rotate, the roles reverse -- whatever had an address in memory previously is now nil and the other has been initialized and allocated which is why I do what I did with the tableView property in the snippet above. Here is where caveat #2 comes into the picture and it's a doozy -- it has to do with the view lifecycle. Here's a practical example for clarity sake: Say I load the app up in Landscape orientation. When I do, my tableViewLandscape outlet has an address in memory and my tableViewPortrait outlet is nil. That's the expected and desired behavior. Now, when I rotate the app, the crazy stuff begins. Here's one place where I need clarity from all of you with regards to instances of UIViewControllers and what's normal vs. what's not so read the following VERY slowly and carefully.
Rotating the app immediately causes the opposite orientation scene (another INSTANCE of MXSAnnouncementsViewController???) to call its viewDidLoad method (in this example, we're in Landscape so the Portrait scene invokes that method). In that method, my local tableView property gets set to the currently active table view for that orientation (see snippet above). When that method finishes, the previous LANDSCAPE instance of MXSAnnouncementsViewController invokes its viewWillDisappear method which is then followed by the PORTRAIT instance's invocation of its viewWillAppear method which then lastly ends with the LANDSCAPE instance calling its willRotateToInterfaceOrientation callback -- that's the order of operation that I'm seeing from the breakpoints. I really do hope you got all of that because my mind just blew up from it all.
If you're still with me at this point, thank you because we're finally at the home stretch. As the title of this post suggests, the problem I'm trying to solve is my app freezing on rotation. If you haven't noticed on the viewDidLoad snippet, the last instruction to get executed is the setupPullToRefresh method which is the following:
- (void)setupPullToRefresh
{
UIRefreshControl *refreshControl = [[UIRefreshControl alloc] init];
[refreshControl addTarget:self action:#selector(refreshTableView:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventValueChanged];
[self.tableView addSubview:refreshControl];
}
Since I already explained the whole view lifecycle order of operations on rotation earlier, to make a very long story short, if I comment out that last setupPullToRefresh instruction at the end of viewDidLoad for MXSAnnouncementsViewController, my app works fine. If I include that instruction, my app becomes totally unresponsive on the first rotation and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. Not sure if I'm dealing with an edge case here or something. Any and all insights are welcome and THANK YOU SO MUCH for reading all of this!

Your best approach is probably to abandon your current design of having two separate controllers for portrait and landscape. On iOS, you should always relayout the views for the orientation you want to be in, not destroying and recreating everything. By trying to handle it by recreating everything, you're just going to get yourself in trouble I think.
You can use auto layout to do complex reorderings of views upon rotation if you know it well, but probably your best bet is to scrap your current code to do landscape, and write code to simply rearrange the views yourself upon rotating. You'll have far fewer issues down the road, and your code will be easier for others to understand and maintain as well.
When you remove that one bit of code, your app may appear to be working just fine, but there is probably something going on behind the scenes that isn't quite correct that could come back to bite you in the future. That's probably why adding the line of code breaks it.

Try to add it after rotation
-(void)didRotateFromInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)fromInterfaceOrientation{
[self setupPullToRefresh];
}
If that doesn't help, create UIRefreshControl only once and set it to the right table on rotation.
If that doesn't help too, follow the first given answer (#Gavin's answer) and create only 1 table on viewDidLoad and relayout things in -(void)viewWillLayoutSubviews

Related

UIPageViewController position is messed up after setting new page programmatically. How to fix? [duplicate]

My UIPageViewController was working fine in iOS 5. But when iOS 6 came along, I wanted to use the new scroll transition style (UIPageViewControllerTransitionStyleScroll) instead of the page curl style. This caused my UIPageViewController to break.
It works fine except right after I've called setViewControllers:direction:animated:completion:. After that, the next time the user scrolls manually by one page, we get the wrong page. What's wrong here?
My workaround of this bug was to create a block when finished that was setting the same viewcontroller but without animation
__weak YourSelfClass *blocksafeSelf = self;
[self.pageViewController setViewControllers:viewControllers direction:UIPageViewControllerNavigationDirectionForward animated:YES completion:^(BOOL finished){
if(finished)
{
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
[blocksafeSelf.pageViewController setViewControllers:viewControllers direction:UIPageViewControllerNavigationDirectionForward animated:NO completion:NULL];// bug fix for uipageview controller
});
}
}];
This is actually a bug in UIPageViewController. It occurs only with the scroll style (UIPageViewControllerTransitionStyleScroll) and only after calling setViewControllers:direction:animated:completion: with animated:YES. Thus there are two workarounds:
Don't use UIPageViewControllerTransitionStyleScroll.
Or, if you call setViewControllers:direction:animated:completion:, use only animated:NO.
To see the bug clearly, call setViewControllers:direction:animated:completion: and then, in the interface (as user), navigate left (back) to the preceding page manually. You will navigate back to the wrong page: not the preceding page at all, but the page you were on when setViewControllers:direction:animated:completion: was called.
The reason for the bug appears to be that, when using the scroll style, UIPageViewController does some sort of internal caching. Thus, after the call to setViewControllers:direction:animated:completion:, it fails to clear its internal cache. It thinks it knows what the preceding page is. Thus, when the user navigates leftward to the preceding page, UIPageViewController fails to call the dataSource method pageViewController:viewControllerBeforeViewController:, or calls it with the wrong current view controller.
I have posted a movie that clearly demonstrates how to see the bug:
http://www.apeth.com/PageViewControllerBug.mov
EDIT This bug will probably be fixed in iOS 8.
EDIT For another interesting workaround for this bug, see this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/21624169/341994
Here is a "rough" gist I put together. It contains a UIPageViewController alternative that suffers from Alzheimer (ie: it doesn't have the internal caching of the Apple implementation).
This class isn't complete but it works in my situation (namely: horizontal scroll).
As of iOS 12 the problem described in the original question seems to be almost fixed. I came to this question because I experienced it in my particular setup, in which it does still happen, hence the word "almost" here.
The setup I experienced this issue was:
1) the app was opened via a deep link
2) based on the link the app had to switch to a particular tab and open a given item there via push
3) described issue happened only when the target tab was not previously selected by user (so that UIPageViewController was supposed to animate to that tab) and only when setViewControllers:direction:animated:completion: had animated = true
4) after the push returning back to the view controller containing the UIPageViewController, the latter was found to be a big mess - it was presenting completely wrong view controllers, even though debugging showed everything was fine on the logic level
I supposed that the root of the problem was that I was pushing view controller very quick after setViewControllers:direction:animated:completion: called, so that the UIPageViewController had no chance to finish something (maybe animation, or caching, or something else).
Simply giving UIPageViewController some spare time by delaying my programmatic navigation in UI via
DispatchQueue.main.asyncAfter(deadline: DispatchTime.now() + 1) { ... }
fixed the issue for me. And it also made the programmatic opening of the linked item more user friendly visually.
Hope this helps someone in similar situation.
Because pageviewVC call multi childVC when swipe it. But we just need last page that visible.
In my case, I need to change index for segmented control when change pageView.
Hope this help someone :)
extension ViewController: UIPageViewControllerDelegate {
func pageViewController(_ pageViewController: UIPageViewController, didFinishAnimating finished: Bool, previousViewControllers: [UIViewController], transitionCompleted completed: Bool) {
guard let pageView = pageViewController.viewControllers?.first as? ChildViewController else { return }
segmentedControl.set(pageView.index)
}
}
This bug still exists in iOS9. I am using the same workaround that George Tsifrikas posted above, but a Swift version:
pageViewController.setViewControllers([page], direction: direction, animated: true) { done in
if done {
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue()) {
self.pageViewController.setViewControllers([page], direction: direction, animated: false, completion: {done in })
}
}
}
Another simple workaround in Swift: Just reset the UIPageViewController's datasource. This apparently clears its cache and works around the bug. Here's a method to go directly to a page without breaking subsequent swipes. In the following, m_pages is an array of your view controllers. I show how to find currPage (the index of the current page) below.
func goToPage(_ index: Int, animated: Bool)
{
if m_pages.count > 0 && index >= 0 && index < m_pages.count && index != currPage
{
var dir: UIPageViewController.NavigationDirection
if index < currPage
{
dir = UIPageViewController.NavigationDirection.reverse
}
else
{
dir = UIPageViewController.NavigationDirection.forward
}
m_pageViewController.setViewControllers([m_pages[index]], direction: dir, animated: animated, completion: nil)
delegate?.tabDisplayed(sender: self, index: index)
m_pageViewController.dataSource = self;
}
}
How to find the current page:
var currPage: Int
{
get
{
if let currController = m_pageViewController.viewControllers?[0]
{
return m_pages.index(of: currController as! AtomViewController) ?? 0
}
return 0
}
}
STATEMENT:
It seems that Apple has spotted that developers are using UIPageViewController in very different applications that go way beyond the
originally intended ones Apple based their design-choices on in the first place. Rather than using it in a gesture driven linear fashion
PVC is often used to programmatically jump to random
positions within a structured environment. So they have enhanced their implementation of UIPageViewController and the class is now calling both DataSource
callbacks
- (UIViewController *)pageViewController:(UIPageViewController *)pageViewController viewControllerBeforeViewController:(UIViewController *)viewController
- (UIViewController *)pageViewController:(UIPageViewController *)pageViewController viewControllerAfterViewController:(UIViewController *)viewController
after setting a new contentViewController on UIPageViewController with
[self.pageViewController setViewControllers:viewControllers direction:UIPageViewControllerNavigationDirectionForward animated:YES completion:nil];
even if an animated turn of pages rather suggests a linear progress in an e.g. page hierarchy like a book or PDF with consecutive pages. Although - I doubt that Apple from a HIG standpoint
is very fond of seeing PVC being used this way, but - it doesn't break backwards compatibility, it was an easy fix, so - they eventually did it. Actually it is just one more call of one of the two DataSource methods that is absolutely unnecessary in a linear environment where pages (ViewControllers) have already been cashed for later use.
However, even if this enhancement might come in very handy for certain use-cases the initial behavior of the class is NOT to be considered a bug. The fact that a lot of developers do - also in other
posts on SO that accuse UIPageViewController of misbehavior - rather emphasizes a widely spread misconception of its design, purpose and functionality.
Without trying to offend any of my fellow developers here in this great facility I nonetheless decided not to remove my initial 'disquisition' that clearly explains to the OP the mechanics of PVC and why his assumption is wrong that he has to deal with a bug here.
This might also be of use for any other fellow developer too who struggles with some intricacies in the implementation of UIPageViewController!
ORIGINAL ANSWER:
After having read all the answers over and over again - included the
accepted one - there is just one more thing left to say...
The design of UIPageViewController is absolutely FLAWLESS and all the
hacks you submit in order to circumvent an alleged bug is nothing but
remedies for your own faulty assumptions because you goofed it up in the
first place!!!
THERE IS NO BUG AT ALL! You are just fighting the framework. I'll explain why!
There is so much talk about page numbers and indices! These are concepts the
controller knows NOTHING about! The only thing it knows is - it is showing
some content (btw. provided by you as a dataViewController) and that it can
do something like a right/left animation in order to imitate a page turn.
CURL or SCROLL...!!!
In the pageViewController's world there only exists a current SPACE (let's call
it just this way to avoid confusion with pages and indices).
When you initially set a pageViewController it only minds about this very SPACE.
Only when you start panning its view it starts asking its DataSource what it
eventually should display in case a left/right flip should happen. When you start
panning to the left the PVC asks first for the BEFORE-SPACE and then for the
AFTER-SPACE, in case you start to the right it does it the other way round.
After the completed animation (a new SPACE is displayed by the PVC's view) the
PVC considers this SPACE as its new center of the universe and while it is at it, it
asks the DataSource about the one it still does not know anything about. In case of
a completed turn to the right it wants to know about the new AFTER space and in
case of a completed turn to the left it asks for a new BEFORE space.
The old BEFORE space (from before the animation) is in case of a completed turn to
the right completely obsolete and gets deallocated as soon as possible. The old center
is now the new BEFORE and the former AFTER is the new center. Everything just
shifted one step to the right.
So - no talk of 'which page' or 'whatever index' - just simply - is there a BEFORE or
an AFTER space. If you return NIL to one of the DataSource callbacks the PVC just
assumes it is at one extreme of your range of SPACES. If you return NIL to both
callbacks it assumes it is showing the one and only SPACE there is and will never
ever again call a DataSource callback anymore! The logic is up to you! You define
pages and indices in your code! Not the PVC!!!
For the user of the class there are two means of interacting with the PVC.
A pan-gesture that indicates whether a turn to the BEFORE/AFTER space is desired
A method - namely setViewControllers:direction:animated:completion:
This method does exactly the same than the pan gesture is doing. You are indicating the
direction (e.g. UIPageViewControllerNavigationDirectionBackward/Forward)
for the animation - if there is one intended - which in other words just means -> going to
BEFORE or AFTER...
Again - no mentioning of indices, page-numbers etc....!!!
It is just a programmatically way of achieving the same a gesture would!
And the PVC is doing right by showing the old content again when moving back
to the left after having moved to the right in the first place. Remember
- it is just showing content (that you provide) in a structured way - which is a 'single page turn' by design!!!
That is the concept of a page turn - or BOOK, if you like that term better!
Just because you goof it up by submitting PAGE 8 after PAGE 1 doesn't mean the PVC
cares at all about your twisted opinion of how a book should work. And the user of your
apps neither. Flipping to the right and back to the left should definitely result in reaching
the original page - IF done with an animation. And it is up to YOU to correct the goof by
finding a solution for the disaster. Don't blame it on the UIPageViewController. It is doing
its job perfectly!
Just ask yourself - would you do the same thing with a PAGE-CURL animation? NO ?
Well, neither should you with a SCROLL animation!!! An animated page turn is a page turn and only a page turn!
In either mode!
And if you decide to tear out PAGE 2 to PAGE 7 of your BOOK that's perfectly fine!
But just don't expect UIPageViewController to invent a non-existing PAGE 7 when turning back to the recent page unless YOU tell it that things have changed...
If you really want to achieve an uncoordinated jump to elsewhere, well - do it without an
animation! In most cases this will not be very elegant but - it's possible... -
And the PVC even plays nicely along! When jumping to a new SPACE without animation
it will ask you further down the road for both - the BEFORE and AFTER controller. So your application-logic can keep up with the PVC...
But with an animation you are always conveying - move to the previous/next space (BEFORE -
AFTER). So logically there is no need at all for the PVC to ask again about a space it already
knows about when animating page turns!!!
If you wanna see PAGE 7 when flipping back to the left after having animated from PAGE 1
to the right - well, I would say - that's definitely your very own problem!
And just in case you are looking for a better solution than the 'completion-block' hack from
the accepted answer (because with it you are doing work beforehand for something that might
possibly not even get used further down the road) use the gesture recognizer delegate:
- (BOOL)gestureRecognizerShouldBegin:(UIGestureRecognizer *)gestureRecognizer
Set your PVC's DataViewController here (without animation) if you really intend to go back
left to PAGE 7 and the DataSource will be asked for BEFORE and AFTER and you can submit
whatever page you like! With a flag or ivar that you should have stashed away when doing your uncontrolled
jump from PAGE 1 to 8 this should be no problem...
And when people keep on complaining about a bug in the PVC - doing 2 page turns when it is
supposed to do 1 turn only - point them to this article.
Same problem - triggering an un-animated setViewControllers: method within the transition gesture
will cause exactly the same havoc. You think you set the new center - the DataSource is asked
for the new BEFORE - AFTER dataController - you reset your index count... - Well, that seems OK...
But - after all that business the PVC ends its transition/animation and wants to know about the
next (still unknown to it) dataViewController (BEFORE or AFTER) and also triggers the DataSource. That's totally justified ! It needs to know where in its small BEFORE - CENTER - AFTER
world it is and be prepared for the next turn.
But your program-logic adds another index++ count to its logic and suddenly got 2 page turns !!!
And that is one off from where you think you are.
And YOU have to account for that! Not UIPageViewController !!!
That is exactly the point of the DataSourceProtocol only having two methods! It wants to be as generic as possible - leaving you the space and freedom to define your own logic and not being stuck with somebody else's special ideas and use-cases! The logic is completely up to you. And only because you find functions like
- (DataViewController *)viewControllerAtIndex:(NSUInteger)index storyboard:(UIStoryboard *)storyboard position:(GSPositionOfDataViewController)position;
- (NSUInteger)indexOfViewController:(DataViewController *)viewController;
in all the copy/pasted sample applications in the cloud doesn't necessarily mean that you have to eat that pre-cook food! Extend them any way you like! Just look above - in my signature you will find a 'position:' argument! I extended this to know later on if a completed page turn was a right or a left turn. Because the delegate unfortunately just tells you whether your turn completed or not! It doesn't tell you about the direction! But this sometimes matters for index-counting, depending on your application's need...
Go crazy - they are your's...
HAPPY CODING !!!

Is it a MUST for viewWillAppear to have [super viewWillAppear] method as well

I placed my code for iAd/AdMob ads in...
-(void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated{}
Ads work perfectly fine the way I have them now on all iOS devices.
When I connected my iPhone to Xcode and clicked on Product -->Analyze a message states...
The viewWillAppear:instance method in UIViewController subclass 'iPhoneSIX' is missing a [super viewWillAppear:] call
I just accidentally stumbled upon this Product-->Analyze thing. Do I really need to add [super viewWillAppear] even though everything works perfectly fine on all devices as it currently is. Will Apple reject my app if I don't pay attention to the Product-->Analyze issue navigator?
Also, what does ...
[super viewWillAppear:YES];
What does calling this do?
According to Apple: (emphasis mine)
This method is called before the receiver's view is about to be
added to a view hierarchy and before any animations are configured for
showing the view. You can override this method to perform custom tasks
associated with displaying the view. For example, you might use this
method to change the orientation or style of the status bar to
coordinate with the orientation or style of the view being presented.
If you override this method, you must call super at some point in your
implementation.
Apple doesn't gets that specific when deciding to Accept or Reject your app. It only follows the guidelines, which doesn't get that much into the weeds of your specific methods.
Calling [super viewWillAppear:YES] is a best practice, and I would recommend it. Always including super ensures that any code in the super classes get called before executing any additional code. So if you or someone else coded a super class that expected some code to be executed, you are guaranteed to still execute it, rather than just overwriting the whole method in the subclass.
Say you have a view controller of type MyViewController which is a subclass of UIViewController. Then say you have another view controller of type MyOtherViewController, which is a subclass of MyViewController. Say you're coding now some things in viewWillAppear in MyOtherViewController. If you call super first, it will call viewWillAppear in MyViewController before executing any code. If viewWillAppear in MyViewController calls super first, then it will call viewWillAppear in UIViewController before executing any code.
I'm quite certain Apple will not reject your app for failing to call super on an overridden method, primarily because there are cases where you may specifically want to avoid calling super.
That said, as Josh Gafni mentions it is definitely a best practice to do so, unless you have a very good reason for not. Also bear in mind some view controller subclasses (can't recall specifically which ones, but maybe UICollectionViewController) will only work properly if their view lifecycle methods get called appropriately, so not calling super can definitely break some classes (sometimes in subtle ways you may not realize).
Therefore my suggestion is add the call to super (generally as the first line in the method) and see if things continue to work fine. If not, spend a bit of time trying to understand what is happening differently and see if you can solve it in a different way. In general you should always (as a force of habit) provide calls to super on any view lifecycle methods you override whenever possible.

switching screens and transition screens for an app in objective-c

This is a two part question.
The first question:
So I have an app that transitions from one screen to another, using nib files. heres the code i use to switch screens:
self.transitionView = [[TransitionViewController alloc] initWithNibName:#"TransitionViewController" bundle:nil];
[self.view addSubview: self.transitionView.view];
my problem is i have about 30 - 40 lines of code in the viewdidload method that could conceivably be slowing the transition down slightly, as some of the code uses NSURL to read data in, but its a 2 - 3 second wait between when it enters the viewdidload method and when the view actually finishes loading. the line [super viewdidload] is at the very top of all of this too, which is the most confusing part. so why is my program taking 2 - 3 seconds to load? i think thats a pretty long time considering how little code i have there.
part 2 of the question is i want to create a transition screen that appears for 2 - 3 seconds before the actual screen loads. Ive taken that code out and for some reason my nib file still takes forever to load so i know it has nothing to do with that, but the transition screen needs to pop up BEFORE screen 2 for 3 seconds, even if the app is being opened after 10 minutes. i know there was a function in appdelegate that could assist in this endeavor but im at a loss for what the code should look like. it doesnt seem to be switching with
self.transitionView = [[TransitionViewController alloc] initWithNibName:#"TransitionViewController" bundle:nil];
[self.view addSubview: self.transitionView.view];
and aside from that, im at a loss for an understanding about how the code should be constructed to switch between screens in that fashion. any articles or suggestions anybody can give me?
EDIT
I also tried to separate the NSURL data in the viewdidload method from the method itself. i put it all in a method called initialize, and called it from screen 1 right after calling the 2nd view. it didnt help the switching time at all. the reason i did that is because i didnt want to receive all the nsurl data over again when the person opens the app. i just want them to retrieve it one time and be done with it. am i doing somethign wrong here? this is extremely frustrating
You should not put your transition effects in viewdidload , you should put them in viewdidappear or viewwillappear, that is the the next step that the controller will take after it is loaded. That is your best choice, as for the screen to to put it there, you need to load it using the nib file or in the viewdidload.
I hope that was helpful

Slow UIViewController load time (slow ClientState warning)

Since I converted an old app to iOS 6 I've started getting the following message in my console.
WARNING: Slow defaults access for key ClientState took 0.023656 seconds, tolerance is 0.020000
Other than updating my code from iOS 5 to iOS 6, I also switched over to auto-layout. I've run Instruments/Time Profiler and the rootViewController in my appDelegate is the problem. Everytime I switch view controllers it sucks the vast major of the time, (regardless of whether I have to instantiate the view controller or re-using one which already exists).
window.rootViewController = myViewController;
I know what the method does superficially, but I'm not sure what happens under the covers... what would cause it to be slow now and what can I do to speed it up?
EDIT: I've tried taking my storyboard off auto-layout and the problem vanishes (of course my UI layout is in shambles). So the obvious conclusion is, it's something about auto-layout. I've probably just under 70 views all combined on the screen and the various constraints needed to lay them out. I have a hard time believing auto-layout is that much slower (from ~80ms with auto-layout turned off to ~1370ms with auto- layout turned on).
Having 70 views on-screen sounds like a lot! My proposal is to make it simpler in some way:
Do you REALLY need all 70 views at the same time?
Check if all views need autolayout, remove it where-ever possible
Can some views be replaced by graphics? I've used views e.g. for shadows, might have been images
Can you split storyBoard into several smaller ones e.g. one for login, details, edit mode etc. Part of the slowness might come from system having to deal with (too) big storyBoards.
Consider creating a new project with 2 view controllers and test the switching speed. Every iOS app has a window, a root view controller and a view controller. The problem isn't likely to be as narrow and clear-cut as you may be hoping. What does each view controller load? Did you inspect the underlying code? Does app delegate do anything on initialization or change of root view controller?

Saving iOS Application Scene State

This may be impossible, but I'm trying to save the state of my application between scene transitions, but I can't figure out what to do. Currently I love the way that when you have an application running and hit the home button, you can go back to that application just where you left off, but if you transition between scenes (in a storyboard), once you get back to that scene the application state was not saved.
I only have two different scenes that need to be saved (you transition back and forth from one to the other). How can I go about saving a storyboard scenes state without taking up precise memory?
More Detailed: Here is my entire storyboard. You transition back and forth between scenes using the plus toolbar button. On the second scene the user can tap on the table view cells and a real image will fill the image view (See figure 1.2)
Figure 1.1
In figure 1.2 you see what happens when you tap inside one of the many table view cells (an image view pops up.)
Figure 1.2
THE PROBLEM: When you tap a table view cell, which fills an image view (shown in figure 1.2) it works fine if you stay on that scene or even hit the iPhone home button (if you hit the iPhone home button and then reopen the app the scene's state was saved and the image view filled with a simple image still shows just like we left it), but if I transition (using the plus button) back to the first scene, and then use the plus button on the first scene to get back to the second scene the image view that I created (shown in figure 1.2) disappears and the second scene loads without saving the state and image views we filled.
EDIT: I tried using the same view controller for both scenes, but it didn't solve the problem.
UPDATE: I just found the following code (that I think stores a views state). How could I use this and is this what I've been looking for?
MyViewController *myViewController=[MyViewController alloc] initWithNibName:#"myView" bundle:nil];
[[self navigationController] pushViewController:myViewController animated:YES];
[myViewController release];
I would suggest a combination of two things:
1. Take DBD's advice and make sure that you don't continuously create new views
2. Create a shared class that is the data controller (for the golfers, so that the data is independent of the scene)
The correct way to make the segues would be to have one leading from the view controller on the left to the one on the right. However, to dismiss the one on the right you can use
-(IBAction)buttonPushed:(id)sender
[self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
}
This will take you back the the view controller on the left, with the view controller on the left in its original state. The problem now is how to save the data on the right.
To do this, you can create a singleton class. Singleton classes have only one instance, so no matter how many times you go to the view controller on the right, the data will always be the same.
Singleton Class Implementation (Of a class called DataManager) - Header
#interface DataManager : NSObject {
}
+(id)initializeData;
-(id)init;
#end
Singleton Class Implementation (Of a class called DataManager) - Main
static DataManager *sharedDataManager = nil;
#implementation DataManager
+(id)initializeData {
#synchronized(self) {
if (sharedDataManager == nil)
sharedDataManager = [[self alloc] init];
}
return sharedDataManager;
}
-(id)init {
if(self == [super init]) {
}
return self;
}
#end
Then, inside your view controller code you can grab this instance like this
DataManager *sharedDataManager = [DataManager initializeDataManager];
This way you will have the same data no matter how many times you switch views.
Also, you can better adhere to MVC programming by keeping you data and your view controllers separate. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model–view–controller)
Figure 1.1 has a fundamental flaw which I believe the basis of your problem.
Segues (the arrows between controllers on the storyboard) create new versions of the UIViewControllers. You have circular segues. So when you go "back" to the original screen through the segue is really taking you forward by creating a new version.
This can create a major problem for memory usage, but it also means you can't maintain state because each newly created item is an empty slate.
Since your are using a UINavigationController and pushViewController:animated: you should "pop" your controller to get rid of it.
On your "second" scene, remove the segue from the + button and create an IBAction on a touchUpInside event. In the IBAction code add the "pop"
- (IBAction)plusButtonTapped {
[self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:YES];
}
I see what you mean. This should happen to every application, as when the last view controller in the navigation stack is transitioned away from, it is deallocated and freed. If you need to save values such as text or object positions, a plist may be the way to go. See this related question for how to use a plist.
Apple isn't going to do this for you. You should probably just save the state of each view using NSUserDefaults and each time your application launches re-load your saved data.
If you are storing everything in CoreData you would only need to save the active view and a few object ids, if not you would need to save any data you have.
Don't expect iOS to save anything that you have in memory between launches. Just store it in NSUserDefaults and load it each time.
Store the state of the scene in NSUserDefaults or inside a plist file then when loading up the scene just load it with the settings from there. If the images are loaded from the internet you might also want to save them locally on your iphones hard drive so it runs a bit smoother.
I don't think you should cycle the segues, just use one that connects viewcontroller 1 from viewcontroller 2 should be enough and that way you make sure that no additional viewcontrollers are being made (memory problems maybe?)
However for your particular problem, I believe that you should use core data to save the exact state of your table, view because ios doesn't save the exact state of view at all times. it will require work but you will achieve what you want. You will need to save the exact photo( using a code or enums that will be saved), the location in the table view, the score or well whatever data you need to save that state.
The best of all is that coredata is so efficient that reloading the data when the app is relaucnhed or into foreground it takes no time, and ive used core data to load more than 5k of records until now and works just fine and its not slow at all.
When i get back home ill provide a code you might use to get an idea of what i mean.
The key here is to:
Have some sort of storage for the data that your application needs. This is your application's data model.
Give each view controller access to the model, or at least to the part of the model that it needs to do its job. The view controller can then use the data from the model to configure itself when it's created, or when the view is about to appear.
Have each view controller update the model at appropriate times, such as when the view is about to disappear, or even every time the user makes a change.
There are a lot of ways that you can organize your data in memory, and there are a lot of ways that you can store it on disk (that is, in long term storage). Property lists, Core Data, plain old data files, and keyed archives are all possibilities for writing the data to a file. NSArray, NSDictionary, NSSet, and so on are all classes that you can use to help you organize your data in memory. None of that has anything to do with making your view controllers feel persistent, though. You'll use them, sure, but which one you choose really doesn't matter as far as updating your view controllers goes. The important thing, again, is that you have some sort of model, and that your view controllers have access to it.
Typically, the app delegate sets up the model and then passes it along to the view controllers as necessary.
Something else that may help is that you don't have to let your view controller(s) be deleted when they're popped off the navigation stack. You can set up both view controllers in your app delegate, if you want, so that they stick around. You can then use the ones you've got instead of creating new ones all the time, and in so doing you'll automatically get some degree of persistence.

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