Programatically changing multiple UIViews in masterDetail App - ios

Question

THIS QUESTION HAS BEEN RE-WRITTEN IN ORDER TO PROPERLY COMMUNICATE THE INTENTIONS OF THE AUTHOR
I have a MasterDetail App that will eventually become a way to track an amount of "players" through a fixed amount of "challenges" (60 to be exact). The challenges are the same for every player, while the status of each player on the individual challenges may vary. All of the data about the players are being stored on a Postgres Database and then fetched using the JSONModel in the LeftViewController. I am getting all of the data correctly from the DB and I have successfully put it into a NSMutableDictionary. The data in the Dictionary looks like this (this is one player):
player = (
{
id = 9;
name = "Arthur Dent";
currentChallenge = "Cooking";
timeStarted = "04 Jul 2013 1:08 PM";
challengesDone = (
{
challengeName = "Flying";
timeCompleted = "04 Jul 2013 12:08 PM";
}
);
nextChallenge = "Swimming";
freePass = (
Running,
"Climbing"
);
},
As you can see, the player has some challenges "done" ("done"), some he has doesn't need to do ("pass") on, one he is doing ("currentChallenge") and the one challenge that he will do next ("nextChallenge"). For each of these states that a player can be in, I want the "Challenges" that are in the RightViewController to be color coded so you can understand what is happening at a glance. I need the "challenges" to light up different colors, based on the status of the player, which is determined by the data that is in my NSMutableDictionary.
By creating arrays from the data in the NSDictionary I can get the colors to change by doing this:
if ([freePassArray containsObject:#"challenge three name"])
{
UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed:#"status_pass.png"]; //status_pass.png is my color
[challengeThreeImageView setImage:image];
}
But if I did it like this, I would have to write 240 if and else if statements to cover all possible statuses on all 60 challenges.
My arrays only contain the data of the player selected because I pass the data over like so:
*LeftViewController.m * didSelectRowAtIndexPath
- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
[tableView deselectRowAtIndexPath:indexPath animated:YES];
//Re-fetch the feed from the Postgres Database when a user selects an entry
[JSONHTTPClient getJSONFromURLWithString:#"http://myurl" completion:^(NSDictionary *json, JSONModelError *err) {
NSError* error = nil;
_feed = [[PostgresFeed alloc] initWithDictionary:json error:&error];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotificationName:#"myNotification" object:nil userInfo:[[json objectForKey:#"preclear"] objectAtIndex:indexPath.row]];
}];
Player *selectedPlayer = [_players objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];
if (_delegate)
{
[_delegate selectedPlayer:selectedPlayer];
}
}
So the images wont set for all of the players at once, but they also do not clear after another player is selected.
How do I get the colors to change without writing 240 if and else if statements? and how would I get the colors to clear when I select another player?

Answer 1

Assuming you have all the 50 images and you know which challenge corresponds to which image I would put the status image on top of the actual challenge image:
- (void)setChallengesDone:(NSArray*)doneAr next:(NSArray*)nextAr current:(NSArray*)currentAr andPass:(NSArray*)passAr
{
// remove additions from the previous selected player
UIView *prevAdditionsView = [self.view viewWithTag:122333];
while (prevAdditionsView != nil)
{
[prevAdditionsView removeFromSuperview];
prevAdditionsView = [self.view viewWithTag:122333];
}
for (int i=0; i<[doneAr count]; i++)
{
[self addChallengeImageAdditionWithImage:#"status_done" forChallenge:[doneAr objectAtIndex:i]];
}
for (int i=0; i<[nextAr count]; i++)
{
[self addChallengeImageAdditionWithImage:#"status_next" forChallenge:[nextAr objectAtIndex:i]];
}
for (int i=0; i<[currentAr count]; i++)
{
[self addChallengeImageAdditionWithImage:#"status_current" forChallenge:[currentAr objectAtIndex:i]];
}
for (int i=0; i<[passAr count]; i++)
{
[self addChallengeImageAdditionWithImage:#"status_free" forChallenge:[passAr objectAtIndex:i]];
}
}
- (void)addChallengeImageAdditionWithImage:(NSString*)image forChallenge:(NSString*)challengeTitle
{
UIImageView *challengeImage = [challenges objectForKey:challengeTitle];
CGRect frame = challengeImage.frame;
UIImageView *statusImg = [[[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:[UIImage imageNamed:image]] autorelease];
[statusImg setFrame:frame];
[statusImg setAlpha:0.5]; // optionally add some transparency
[statusImg setTag:122333];
[self.view addSubview:statusImg];
[self.view bringSubviewToFront:challengeImage]; // bring challenge image to front
}
The simplest way to map your challenge titles with the UIImageViews is to maintain a NSDictionary with the challenge titles as keys, and a references to their corresponding UIImageViews as values.

Answer 2

This is an excellent example of the model/view concept.
Each challenge is a model with all the info required (challenge name, status, timestamp and others).
Each of your 50 views is a "challenge view" that knows how to render any challenge.
The status data is in the model; the status image is in the view.
Example:
-(void) drawChallenge: (Challenge*) challenge
{
// Draw challenge name as text
switch ([challenge status])
{
case done: // draw "done" image
case next: // draw "next" image
}
}
The idea is that the challenge itself should not know about how it is rendered, and the view should not know about what the challenge contains. The view is responsible for drawing it.
This could be packed into a ChallengeView subclass of UIView. Then, create your 50 or so ChallengeViews, and call [currentView drawChallenge: currentChallenge].
Essentially, when a new challenge is added, you create a view for it, and give the view a pointer to the challenge. When the challenge view is rendered by iOS, it'll draw "its" challenge as you have described in the drawChallenge method.
If you need a primer on the Model-View-Controller pattern, this section of the Apple docs is pretty good. You can disregard the Controller role in this situation.