Setting up view based on local notification - ios

Question

I'm writing an app that let's the user know when they have a new tip waiting at the same time everyday. I've been able to schedule the notification and write the code for it to fire if the app is running in the foreground. What I'm having trouble with is how to get the same thing to happen when the app is in the background. The complication is that I'm having the view be set up (which buttons are visible etc.) based on the notification itself, as the next step is to have a second notification which would have the view set itself up differently. At the moment, my code in the method looks like this:
- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:
(NSDictionary *)launchOptions
{
// Override point for customization after application launch.
UILocalNotification *note = [launchOptions objectForKey:UIApplicationLaunchOptionsLocalNotificationKey];
NSString *val = [note.userInfo objectForKey:1];
if ([val isEqual: #"first"]) {
}
return YES;
}
My issue is that I have no idea how to set up the view (i.e. how to make two of the buttons [call them button1 and button2] visible within the view) from within that if statement. Any answers would be greatly appreciated, and if this is something unbelievably obvious, then I do apologize and ask only that someone at least point me in the right direction. Thanks

Answer 1

Not 100% on this but believe that
- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:
(NSDictionary *)launchOptions
Finishes before starting to load the views, well it makes more sense this way.
Having this in mind, and been used with success by me, i advise you to set up a public var on app delegate that stores the information you need.
After that is just checking in the
- (void)viewDidLoad
Of your viewController if the var as anything and treat the information as you would when the app is in Foreground.

Answer 2

I will try to give you a more general answer to your problem: iOS programming is based on the MVC (Model-View-Controller) software architecture pattern so you must make your application to be as much as possible compliant with MVC. This means, in your case, that as soon as you receive a local notification, whatever your app is running in the foreground or sleeping in the background or simply ready to startup from scratch, the app will behave in the same way if the MVC bricks are properly setup.
So:
the local notification provides some new data to the app, so you must update the model
once you update the model you notify the app view controller of the model change
the view controller if visible will reflect the change in the view that represents the model, if not visible your app must show the view controller and then refresh the view based on the model status.
Clearly how to do this depends on how and where your app shows the different views, but to keep things simple you can:
create the model that reflects the local notification at startup (application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:)
create the view controller that show the local notification data at startup (note: you "init" the view controller by providing it the model, you don't care the view yet)
then handle the local notification after the model and view controller have been initialized
So when you receive the local notification the app:
updates the model (which exists in all three cases when the app is in foreground or resuming from sleep or starting from scratch)
at this point if the view controller view is already visibile then you simply refresh it with the new model data, if not visible you add the view controller view in your view hierarchy (e.g. by pushing it in your main navigation controller stack); the view refresh will be done by viewDidLoad:
As you can see you don't need any special code to manage this, apart the need to show the local notification related view when the app gets the notification. Clearly things are much more complex if your local notification view is deep in your view hierarchy and you must maintain some consistency: in such case you must rebuild the whole hierarchy and the possibility to do this depends on the information provided by the local notification.
In the simple case, that is when you can place your local notification view controller just inside the main window hierarchy, after you instantiate your main navigation controller:
[applicationWindow setRootController:mainNavigationController]
you will push your local notification controller in the nav controller stack:
[mainNavigationController pushViewController:myLocalNotificationViewController animated:YES]
Sorry if I'm not entering in the detail of your specific problem (I cannot) but probably my explanation will help you in letting you understand that your case is not a special case but can be easily managed by carefully following the main iOS architectural pattern.