iOS UINavigation Controller basics and custom back button - ios

I make my first "serious" iOS app, and have some troubles with the whole UINavigation concept, but all in order. I look answers for my questions but don't find what I want, so here it is.
I want to make menu to a game, it would be look like so:
1) It's a RootViewController and it contain some buttons: new game, options, about.
2) I think it will be another view controller (It must appear when we touch new game button, and we see a menu when we choose game difficulty) the buttons is: easy, medium, hard
3) The game view controller (I think that this VC won't be the part of UINavigationController).
I have some concepts that I want to embody in this menu.
Here is it: I don't want to use UINavigationController Navigation bar, I won't use standard slide animation for UINavCon, I want to make my buttons "move to transparency" and come back with another menu from paragraph 2 mentioned above, it's not necessarily to change background or something else except menu items.
I want to use custom back button, and want to add it to the position I want and not to Navigation Bar.
I have some ideas about animation of menu items.
I don't know this:
It is better to use UINavigationController for my purposes or it's better to use normal ViewController?
If I make a UINavigationController can I see it's "child VCs (I mean not a root VC)" in my storyboard or it will be programmatically created thing and I must make it UI in code? If i must do this programmatically, could I make a segue from UINavigationController from storyboard, or I must do this from code too?
Could I make a UIButton, for example, and assign it functions from a normal UINavigationController back button from Navigation Bar?
Some questions might be dumb, but hope you won't judge me hard.

Okay, I'll do my best:
For custom animations, see
Yes, you make a custom segue class with the animation. try: joris.kluivers.nl/blog/2013/01/15/… and developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/… and cmumobileapps.com/2011/11/04/a-short-tutorial-on-custom-segues
Yes, i think a view controller is your best bet. But by the way, even if you use a navigation controller, you still use normal view controllers. A UINavigationController holds different UIViews, which go forward and backward on the navigation stack. Also, you will need to look up what you need to do to hide the navigation controller.
You can see the child view controllers in a storyboard if you create them their, but not if they are created programmatically, unless you just have the view in their.
[self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:YES] will "press the back button" programmatically, so just link the custom back button to a method that calls this.
If that doesn't cover all of your questions, just comment and I'll answer any more :)

Related

An UITabBar like Tweetbot3

I would like to know if someone have an idea about how Tapbots made Tweetbot3 TabBar?
In my app, there will be many TabItems, and I don't want the "More" Tab (by default), but I'm very interested to have a similar system to Tweetbot, with a "picker" which opens on long press gesture on a TabBarItem.
But, I'm hesitating on the method. It's better to apply a customized UITabBar class, or to totally "deconstruct" the UITabBarController (to use a UIViewController and a custom "tabbar")?
Having created many custom tab bars, I'd start by subclassing UITabBar and UITabBarController. I wouldn't expect any roadblocks with this approach.
You may want to move the default buttons around and then add some custom buttons. Send a message back to the tab bar controller and let it display the popup choices view.

Xcode 6 - Swift - Custom Tabbar with Navigation

I'm trying to create a tabbed application with navigation elements inside the tab bar, as seen in the picture below (the red bar) using Swift/XCode 6.2. Basically those three icons in the middle will direct the user to different view controllers. The other two icons would be context-based. For example, on a table view page you would see the menu icon and add new icon as seen in the image. However, clicking on a row would change the menu icon to a back icon, and the add icon to something else.
That's the general idea, but I'm having a very hard time implementing something even close to this. The first issue is that whenever I embed a view in a Tab Bar Controller, I can't move the tab bar to the top. However, when I create a custom UITabView in a View Controller, Control + Click and dragging a Tab Bar Item to another view doesn't create a segue. I haven't even begun to tackle having the navigation elements inside the bar.
I guess what I'm asking is just for a little guidance on what route to take to tackle this. I'm assuming I can't use a Tab Bar Controller or Navigation Controller because it doesn't seem like I can customize them all that much. So custom Tab Bar and Navigation Bars, and then implemnt the segues and button changes programmatically?
Thanks.
I will try to guide you from an architectural perspective (so you won't find much code below).
Using a UITabBarController
In order to achieve what you are suggesting, you are right you cannot use a UITabBarController straight away, among several reasons, the most immediate one is that they are meant to be always at the bottom and you want it in top (check Apple's docs). The good news is that probably you don't need it!
Note: If you still want to go with a UITabBarController for whatever reason, please see #Matt's answer.
Using a UINavigationController
You can use a UINavigationController to solve this task, since the UINavigationBar of a UINavigationController can be customized. There are multiple ways on how you can organize your view's hierarchy to achieve what you propose, but let me elaborate one option:
To customize a UINavigationBar's to add buttons, you just need to set its navigationItem's title view:
// Assuming viewWithTopButtons is a view containing the 3 top buttons
self.navigationItem.titleView = viewWithTopButtons
To add the burger menu functionality on a UINavigationController you can find several posts on how to do it and infinite frameworks you can use. Check this other SO Question for a more detailed answer (e.g. MMDrawerController, ECSlidingViewController to mention a couple).
About organizing your view hierarchy, it really depends on if when the user taps one of the main top buttons, it will always go to the first view controller in the new section or if you want to bring him back to the last view in the section where he was.
3.1 Switching sections displays the first view of the new section
Your app's UIWindow will have a single UINavigationController on top of the hierarchy. Then each of the 3 top buttons, when tapped, will change the root view controller of the UINavigationController.
Then, when the user changes section, the current navigation hierarchy is discarded by setting the new section view controller as the UINavigationController root view controller.
self.navigationController = [sectionFirstViewController]
3.2 Switching sections displays the last displayed view in the new section
This will require a slightly modified version of the above, where your each of your sections will have its own UINavigationController, so you can always keep a navigation hierarchy per section.
Then, when the user taps one of the top buttons to switch section, instead of changing as previously described, you will change the UIWindowroot view controller to the new section's UINavigationController.
window.rootViewController = sectionNavigationController
Using a custom implementation
Of course, the last and also very valid option would be that you implement yourself your own component to achieve your requirements. This is probably the option requiring the biggest effort in exchange of the highest customizability.
Choosing this option is definitely not recommend to less experienced developers.
I'd like to take a stab at this--I think it is possible to use a tab bar controller here.
Your topmost-level view controller will be a UITabBarController with a hidden UITabBar.
Each tab is contained in a UINavigationController.
All view controllers in the navigation controller will be a subclass of a view controller (say, SwitchableViewController).
In SwitchableViewController's viewDidLoad, you set the navigation item's title view (i.e. whatever's at the center; self.navigationItem.titleView) to be the view that holds the three center buttons. Could be a UISegmentedControl, or a custom view.
Whenever you tap on any of the buttons, you change the topmost UITabBarController's selected index to the view controller you want to show.
Issues you may encounter:
Table views inside tabs will have a scrollIndicatorOffset at the bottom even if the tab bar is hidden.
Solution: Play around with the automaticallyAdjustsScrollViewInsets of the tab bar controller, or the inner view controller. https://stackoverflow.com/a/29264073/855680
Your title view will be animated every time you push a new view controller in the navigation stack.
Solution: Take a look at creating a custom transition animation for the UINavigationController.

Swap/ Transitioning between views iOS programming

I am a newbie to IOS programming and currently i have a tab bar application with two tabs. I have two questions.
The first tab shows a map, imagine it with some pushpins. There is a button on the navigation bar and when this is clicked i want the map view to to move out and a list view to come in. You can see the UI from the image. The button is called list.
Now when i click list I want this view to go away and the list view to come in. So here are my questions ?
1) How do i do this ? I tried the navigation model but i don't want that because I do not want a back button. I tried to make two different views and just dragged the button to that view but the app crashes. I just want the list button on the nab bar and when clicked the view changes to the list view and the button text changes to map. So now if I click the button again it should go back to the map view and the button changes to list.
2) How do i achieve the animations for this ? Ive seen some app where the page flips around and I've seen some options like reducing the opacity etc but I want to achieve the flip animation.
Thank You for any help I get. I really appreciate it.
Interface Builder can do most of this. Hold down the control key and drag from your map View Controller's UIBarButtonItem titled "List" to your list View Controller, then choose the Action Segue "modal". An arrow appears representing the segue; click on it and use the Attributes Inspector to change the Transition to "Flip Horizontal". Here's a video
Or, you could do this programmatically with presentViewController:animated:completion.
Now to get back to the map from the list, I believe that must be done programatically. Create a method that calls dismissViewControllerAnimated:completion: and make your list View Controller's UIBarButtonItem titled "Map" trigger it.
After reading your comments, I am wondering... if the structure of your app is logically a tabbed app structure (as indeed you refer to it as a 'tab bar application'), shouldn't you consider using the UITabViewController instead of a NavigationController? That is what it is designed to do, after all.
If you do use a TabViewController you should reconsider your desire for flip animation, as that doesn't really make UI-sense for tabs. If you can dispense with the flip animation, TabViewController could be a good way to go and you should at least experiment with that before dismissing the idea. It is also designed to grow... you can incorporate any number of tabs in a tab bar. Check out the apple docs (with pictures!)
You will notice that tabs are at the foot of the screen, whereas your 'tab' navController buttons are in a navbar at the top of the screen. This also helps as your app grows, as it is straightforward - from a UI design point of view and programmatically - to incorporate navControllers as navigation tools within individual tabs. For example, if your map/list flip routine does indeed make sense for this part of you app, you can keep this as a single tab (in it's own navigationController) and add other tabs for other parts of the app...
update
From your comment, you are saying that you are interested in the navController-inside-tabBarController setup. In this case here are some ways to get flip transitions AND no back button..
(1) modal presentation
The easiest way to get what you want is to set up one of your viewControllers (say the map view) to present the other one (the list view) modally.
If in the storyboard:
embed your mapViewController in a navController with a navbar button for navigation to the listView as in your picture
add your listViewController to the storyboard and embed it in it's own navContoller (not the mapViewController's navController). Drag a barButtonItem to this navController and wire it up to an IBAction in listViewController
CTRL-drag from mapViewController's 'list' button to the listViewController to create a segue. Select the segue and in the attributes inspector set the segue type to 'modal', with transition 'flips horizontal' and 'animated' checked. Give it a name in case you want to refer to it in code.
in the listViewController's IBAction add this:
[[self presentingViewController] dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:nil];
That should achieve your result. You can use the completion block to send information back from the list view to the map view, and/or set the map view as the listView's delegate.
If you are not using the storyboard check this apple guide
Presenting View Controllers from Other View Controllers
especially "Presenting a View Controller and Choosing a Transition Style".
There is one catch with this approach - when the presented view flips onto the screen, the entire previous view, including the tab bar, is flipped out of the way. The idea is that this is a modal view which the user is required to dismiss before doing anything else in the app.
(2) push/pop in a single navController If this does not suit your intent, you can navigate using a single NavigationController with push and popping of views, and you can hide the back button ... but you really would need to keep the back button functionality as you do want to go back to the mapView, not on to a new map view.
To hide the back button try:
self.navigationItem.hidesBackButton = YES
in the uppermost viewControllers' viewDidLoad
Then you can add a barButtonItem in the xib/storyboard, with this kind of IBAction:
[self popViewControllerAnimated:NO]
or
[self popToRootViewControllerAnimated:NO]
You would have to construct the flip animation in code as it is not supported as a built-in with UINavigationController (best left as an exercise for the reader!)
(3) swapping views in a single viewController As ghettopia has suggested, you could use a single viewController inside a navController (or with a manually place navBar) and swap two views around using the UIView class methods
transitionFromView:toView:duration:options:animations:completion
transitionWithView:duration:options:animations:completion.
This could be a good simplifying solution as your list and map are essentially two views of the same data model.

Need a solution for a UINavigationController, with a back button to the application

In my app I would like to have a way to make the user go to a website, but not leave my app.
I do that with a UIWebView.
I'd like to constantly have a "Back to app" button on the NavigationBar on the top.
The rest of the Web navigation (back, forward) should be on the top as well, but appear and disappear with the context.
The problem is that I don't know how to make the buttons appear on the UINavigationController.
How can this be done?
I have my UIWebViewDelegate set up to receive all the relevant functions, but the buttons don't appear.
EDIT: I need to solve this programmatically
As of iOS 5, there are leftBarButtonItems and rightBarButtonItems (note the plural) properties on UINavigationItem, so there's a way to have more buttons. It seems to me that these are only accessible programmatically, but not from Interface Builder.
If you can, my suggestion is to not just add the Web View as a subview, but to give it its own ViewController and push that on the Navigation Controller's stack. That'll give you your back button for free (that's kind of what UINavigationController was designed for, after all). And it should help you to keep the web browsing code separated form the other stuff in your app.
NB: in your case, you'll have set the leftItemsSupplementBackButton property of the Browser View Controller's navigationItem to YES to get the automatic back button (the details are in the documentation)
You can not have more than two buttons on the NavigationController's navbar without doing some tricks. There are two properties self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem and self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem. If not, add a custom view and place the buttons there. A good way to implement multiple buttons with multiple actions is shown here.

Tabbar not showing in ios application

i am making one iOS tabbar application in that i have put 4 different tabs and whenever i click on 1 st tab and load another view after clicking of the first tab. After that when i press back button then tabbar is not displaying .So that i want hint that how can i show that
back the tabbar when we move from one tab from another and yes how i can use consistent the tabbar in whole application can you just guys help me on this i am new to iOS development.
here i am put the screen shot ...
here first screen is this one..
when i tap the video button that are first in the view then another window open
which are as under and see the tabbar is not there...
when in video controller there is tabbar is there but i drag and connect to that then tabbar is disabled
Looking at your screen snapshots, do I correctly assume you're attempting to transition to the "Videos" scene by touching the big "Videos" button in the center of the "Home" scene (rather than touching the tab bar button at the bottom of the screen, which I assume works fine)? If that's the case, you need to have your button tell the view controller's tab bar controller that you want to change the index of the tab bar, and it takes care of it for you. You cannot do the transition using a segue (or at least not without a custom segue, which is even more complicated than the procedure I outline below). If you're changing the view some other way (e.g. using a standard segue or using presentViewController, pushViewController programmatically, etc.), your tab bar can disappear on you.
You later said:
when in video controller there is tabbar is there but i drag and connect to that then tabbar is disabled
Yes, that's true. You cannot use a segue from one of your big buttons to one of the tabs in your tab bar. (Or technically, if you wanted to use a segue, it would be a custom segue which would do something very much like my below code, though perhaps a tad more complicated.) So, rather than using a segue for your big button, you need to write an IBAction (connected to the big Videos button on the Home scene), that tells the tab bar to change its selection:
- (IBAction)clickedVideosButton:(id)sender
{
[self.tabBarController setSelectedIndex:1];
}
A couple of comments:
My answer was predicated on the assumption that your tab bar works as expected when you tap on the buttons of the tab bar, itself. If you tap the buttons at the bottom of the screen, do you transition to your other views correctly and preserve the tab bar? If so, my answer above should solve your issues in getting the big buttons to work. If not, though, then the problem rests elsewhere and you need to show us your code that might account for that (either you're something non-standard in the UITabBarControllerDelegate methods, or your viewDidLoad of the view is doing something nonstandard).
If I understand your user interface design right, you have the tab bar at the bottom as well as the big buttons in the middle, which presumably do the same thing. That is, no offense, a curious user interface design (duplicative buttons, requiring extra tap on a button, etc.). You might want to choose to either use either big buttons (in which you can retire the tab bar, eliminate the IBAction code I've provided above, and just use a nice simple navigation controller and push segues, for example), or just use the tab bar (and lose the home screen, lose the big buttons, etc.).
You also made reference to "press back button", and I don't see any "back" button on any of your screen snapshots. Do I infer that you have a navigation controller and you're doing a pushViewController or push segue somewhere? If you're doing something with back buttons, you might need to clarify your question further.

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