I am exploring the design options for an iPAD application with multiple views on the different part of the main screen. I am going to have different ViewController for each of the view. UI is quite different from what any of the available view controllers (UISplitViewController, UINavigationController etc.) provide. I have been reading about the container extension api of UIViewController (especially addChildViewController):
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#DOCUMENTATION/UIKit/Reference/UIViewController_Class/Reference/Reference.html
(Look for "Implementing a Container View Controller")
However, it seems to me that this functionality is mainly designed for applications with UI that transition from one view to another (transitionFromViewController...). In my case, all of the views are visible at the same time. However, they do interact with each other. So my questions:
Am I missing something w.r.t. container extension of View Controller? I will still probably end up using this just to keep the list of child view controllers but don't see much value.
Can you recommend any other api/pattern that I should be using?
Thank you.
You can easy access to childViewController.
self.childViewControllers will return an array with all childs.
I asked similar question couple days ago: Maybe this will help you:
Get container VC instead of view
Take a look at http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/ViewControllerPGforiPhoneOS/CreatingCustomContainerViewControllers/CreatingCustomContainerViewControllers.html.
Add your various view controllers to self.childViewControllers and add the views of the child controllers as subviews of self.view.
Related
For now I have a single login view controller that hide and adds subviews dynamically based on user interaction. Is it better to have multiple UIViews with one view controller, or multiple view controllers?
The benefit of having children UIViewControllers would be if you needed to care about the view lifecycle in any of the children. For instance, if in some of your subviews (child views) you needed to know if it appeared to trigger some logic, then it would be good to use children UIViewControllers.
Another reason might be, if you wanted to use view controller transitions within your custom container, as described by Apple in the UIViewController class reference:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIViewController_Class/index.html#//apple_ref/occ/instm/UIViewController/transitionFromViewController:toViewController:duration:options:animations:completion:
But, to me it doesn't sound like you would need this, it sounds like you would just show/hide your views, or otherwise animate them.
But if your views don't care about any of that, and just need to render UI elements, I'd say using children UIViewControllers adds additional complexity without much benefit.
This is under the assumption that either way, all your views are living on the single UIViewController's view. If you are pushing and popping view controllers inside a UINavigationController, or presenting ViewControllers modally, you definitely should use UIViewControllers for that.
Also, you definitely shouldn't put all your view code inside that single view controller. You should use subclasses of UIView, or some other mechanism of making sure you separate your components.
For example you might have:
LoginViewController - organizes and hides and shows the individual views
SignInView - shows the sign in form
RegisterView - shows the register form
...etc
Of course its better to have multiple view controllers for many reasons:
Each view controller has its own code/logic/functionality.
Better for memory management. Once you're done from a view controller, system will automatically deallocates it from memory. Using multiple views will be overload in your system when some views are not used.
Better organisation for your project. You will just present/dismiss/push/pop view controllers and pass data between each other. Instead you will deal with horrible logic for hiding and showing UIViews.
Using one view controller will have a massive amount of code which in long term the project will be an impossible mission to manage.
Having multiple view controllers is better in the sense that you would have more ease at coding them individually. Also Navigation will be good which is good for User Experience.
Memory Management will be efficient.
The MVC architecture(Model View Controller) will instead become Massive View Controller which will be a headache while debugging.
Check out this answer for more clarity. I think you are confused between ViewController and View.
Check out the accepted answer of this question in the link. Hope it helps.
About viewController's "viewDidLoad" and "viewWillAppear" methods
So here is the problem I am trying to solve.
In each viewController I am trying to insert ads and the actual control elements. I finished couple of tutorial on raywenderlinch.com to understand that how people professionally put ads in their app. They used UIViews to have two views under mainview of view controller. So I completely understood that one subview hold the ads and another is holding actual app contents. if Ad is loaded take up the screen or else let other view have all available area.
After I came back to xcode I started coding the way I learned there. but when I was dropping UIView on storyboard, I saw containerView, which I think was not present when the tutorial was written.
So I am here to ask about the both approach and their pros and cons.
So basically its UIView vs ContainerView. Which way I should do, and why ?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
You use UIView when you already have a view and you do not need to have a dedicated view controller to build and handle interactions within it.
From the UIView help page:
UIView object claims a rectangular region of its enclosing superview (its parent in the view hierarchy) and is responsible for all drawing in that region ...
Simplified structure:
YourViewController ---(has)---> UIView
You use UIContainerView when you need to embed another view controller in the one that you already have. The embedded view controller is in charge of returning a view for the region that the UIViewContainer occupies. Therefore, your UIContainerView knows which view controller to use to render UIView inside the region it occupies.
From the UIContainerView help page:
Container View defines a region within a view controller's view subgraph that can include a child view controller.
Simplified structure:
YourViewController ---(has)---> SubViewController ---(has)---> UIView
That SubViewController returns a view and handles its events.
As an alternative answer, you can also consider the use case instead of the technical differences. For example: Why use a container view?
A common use for container views is to reuse (share) a view, directly in the storyboard. Previously, reusing a view required creating a separate "xib" file, and programmatically adding that view when the view controller was loaded.
The above image is from this extremely simple, easy to follow guide that walks you through how to setup a container view that is shared between 2+ view controllers.
A few other thoughts on when to use it:
A navigation bar is part of a UINavigationController, which is a container view controller. So, if you wanted to build a custom alternative, you'd probably use a container view.
A container might help anytime that you want to temporarily show a complex view on top of your current VC but can't/don't want to present another VC modally. This approach still allows you to build that temporary view in interface builder, to setup auto layout constraints for it, etc
I also found a guide explaining that there's a way to switch out different container views based on the situation, allowing your VC to have sub-sections which are very dynamic, yet without having to build those sub-sections programmatically. A picture, from that guide, exhibiting what I'm referring to:
Hopefully this helps people who are trying to figure out when a container view applies to them. If you have other example use cases, please edit/add them or leave them in the comments!
If you see in detail these container view of UIView class type. To get the insights of why we need containerView you should see below portion
In most ways, a container view controller is just like a content view controller. It manages views and content, coordinates with other objects in your app, and responds to events in the responder chain. Before designing a container controller, you should already be familiar with designing content view controllers. The design questions in “Creating Custom Content View Controllers” also apply when creating containers.
for more detail about container view goto link
But before you begin you should have an understanding of
and also you can check this tutorial for how to use container view.
Thus you can go for both the approaches.
Hope this will help you. happy coding :)
I'm just getting back into iOS development after a year or so away and am looking for a way to have a single view above or below a UITabViewController view. The idea is to have one ad view that is used throughout the app instead of one on each tab. The constant reinitializing of the ad view seems like it would be a lot of overhead so having one persist throughout would seem to be more effective.
I've searched for this but not found much of anything so even a useful link would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Jason
I see several approaches here:
Since you are setting up your view hierarchy in your application's delegate, I'd suggest creating a separate UIViewController and managing it from your app delegate. That way you can show/hide it in the main UIWindow, without having to do much work.
You can subclass UITabBarController and show the ad in the visible view controller. This is more work, but your app architecture is arguably cleaner, because your app delegate doesn't get cluttered with ad-related code.
Another option is to look into a UIViewController category, where you can manage add related code. Not necessarily the cleanest, but it keeps the ads out of both your app delegate, and your tab bar controller. (You'd add the ad view as a category property via runtime level calls and associate objects, but that gets messy.)
I'd probably go with the first approach if it were me, but I could argue for either of the other two approaches, since an ad view doesn't really necessitate it's own view controller.
How about create a parent view controller and each view controller inherits from that parent view controller? Parent view controller has a ad view or table view, so every child view controller will has those two view as well.
Okay, after spending some time trying to create and manage a customer view controller for this I stumbled on the Container View Controller capability Apple added in iOS 5. I have no need to support iOS 4 or earlier so this works good for me. There's a good description of it here (unfortunately the author never wrote part 2 with a tutorial):
Container View Controller description
And a decent tutorial is available here:
Container View Controller tutorial
Between the two of these I was able to create a good setup with an AdViewController and BodyViewController (TabBarController) contained in a Container View Controller. This gives me all the capabilities I need (at least so far).
Is it possible to have two NavigationControllers managing two TableViewControllers at the same time as illustrated below? If yes, how would you implement it in iOS? Thanks very much
Learn how to use the new UIViewController containment APIs in iOS 5 to create your own container view controllers. Code available on Github: https://github.com/peterfriese/UIViewControllerContainmentSample
In general, it can be done because people do it sometimes within a split view controller. I think the implementation would be best done by having a container controller (similar in theory to a split view controller) that manages the screen space the way you've shown it. It would then use child controllers, which in turn would be navigation controllers that contained table view controllers.
I have a offlineMapVC and a onlineMapVC for my application to support both online maps (using MapKit and Google Maps) and offline maps (using Route-Me).
I made my own mapVC to manage the switching of these mapVCs and be able to use the view controller as one separate view controller. Well I've done this by making the offlineMapVC and the onlineMapVC instance variables of the new mapVC witch I now use all over my application.
First off all things seem to work but. However while using this approach for a longer time I ran into some problems due my using of View Controllers in a hierarchy. I read this is the wrong way to go. What is the right way to manage the switching between two view controllers? My question seems fairly simple but I couldn't find a decent solution.
I put view controllers in view controllers, myself, and I have seen much better programmers than me doing the same thing. (See Rob Napier "iOS 5 Programming - Pushing the Limits". He mentions it frequently.) As long as you don't have more than one view controller directly controlling the same views and subviews, you should be okay with it.
Since Jonah Williams wrote that article, I think iOS 5 formalized the use of view controller hierarchy with custom content view controllers. You might consider your mapVC to be a custom content view controller and implement onlineMapVC and offlineMapVC as child view controllers.
(Apple documentation links tend to change frequenctly, so Google "Custom Content View Controller" for the documentation.)
If you can give some more context to what you mean by "switching between two view controllers" that would help answer your question. Generally, I have more than one view controller active at the same time. I don't switch between them. (I use navigation and tab bar controllers in the same applicaiton, but I assume you are aware of how those work and you're asking a different question. It's just not clear what the detials are in your case.)