Pushing a view when the rootViewController is not a UINavigationController - ios

Alright, so I've been looking around for an answer to the following question: How to push a certain view controller into view when a push notification arrives from the AppDelegate?
And most answers are that if the rootViewController is a UINavigationController, I have to instantiate a view via my StoryBoard and push it with that root navigation controller.
Here's my situation. Here's how my storyboard is organised:
So as you see my rootViewController doesn't have UINavigationController. So, how do I go about pushing a certain view out of my storyboard?
NOTE: Presenting some separate modal view for push notifications isn't really a great idea. It's my last resort.
I'd like a solution as in the Apple Mail and Message apps.

Alright, I guess I don't give up that easily :) Here's the solution I found to my problem. Since I am presenting my main app views from within a modal view controller, here's what I did:
Since iOS 5 every view controller has a presentedViewController property. Once you know that, it's pretty easy from there.
Here's some specific code from inside AppDelegate.m
- (void) application:(UIApplication *)application didReceiveRemoteNotification:(NSDictionary *)userInfo {
if ([[userInfo objectForKey:#"notificationType"] isEqualToString: #"messageType"]) {
UITabBarController * tabBarController = (UITabBarController *)[self.window.rootViewController presentedViewController];
[tabBarController setSelectedIndex:kChatViewIndex];
// My view controller that I presented modally is a tabBar, your case can be different.
// ... so from here I can reach any navigation controller or any other view from inside my app
}
Now since you've got your view controller, you can use setSelectedIndex: if it's a tabBarController, or push a certain view controller if it's a navigation unit.
Hope this helps anyone with a similar problem.
Cheers!

Related

Start second view controller of navigation stack first

There is a default calendar app.
It starts with the next view controller and back button is already there like there some other view controller was started before this one:
When you press back button you get the next view controller:
How did they do it?
In my app I need the same logic (to start a view controller with the latest or default category but users can press back button to select a different category)
If I were to do this, I would start by simply using pushViewController(animated:) to push the month view onto the navigation stack, with animated: false in the root view controller's viewWillAppear(animated:) method. The calendar would appear to the user already one level deep in the navigation stack.
So, the first controller is the year view, and then the month view is the second one pushed onto the stack, but it all happens before the user has seen any of the views. Simple, right?
Here are the docs for UINavigationController in case that helps.
I think what you want is to push the view controllers once at start. An easy way to do it is to sub-class UINavigationController and assign it to the root navigation controller in your storyboard. Then simply do the work in your sub-class' viewWillAppear method, as this will be called exactly once at startup.
Of course, you can also accomplish the same result by using a flag to only load the next view controller once if you put the push code in the first view controller's viewWillAppear.
#interface MyNavigationController : UINavigationController
#end
#implementation MyNavigationController
- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
UIViewController *secondVC = [self.storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:#"secondVC"];
[self pushViewController:secondVC animated:NO];
}
#end

Setting the rootViewController after a modal view has been presented

I have an app where I re-init the app if it's been in the background for too long. When the user opens up the app after the allotted time, the re-init happens, and I display the splash screen while I get the data I need. When I get the data from the server I set the window.rootViewController property to a new value. If the old root view controller has had a view controller presented modally, and that view controller was being displayed when the re-init happens, dealloc doesn't get called on the view controller (I've tested this by putting NSLog's in the dealloc method). In the case where a modal view controller was not presented, the dealloc gets called as expected.
Does anyone know of a solution to this? I'm not sure if it's an Apple bug, or if it's something that I need to handle on my own.
The solution that I came up with was before I set the RootViewController, I call
- (void)_dismissRootViewControllersModalViewsIfAny {
UIViewController *rootViewController = self.window.rootViewController;
if (rootViewController.presentedViewController || rootViewController.presentingViewController)
{
[rootViewController dismissViewControllerAnimated:NO completion:nil];
}
}
This is a method that I created, which makes sure that if there is a modal view controller to dismiss, it will be dismissed.
Your modal view is presented by the rootViewController (it's presentingViewController property is set to the rootViewController), that might be the source of your problem.
You can set your rootViewController to an instance of UINavigationController and then just use its setViewControllers:animated: method to display a freshly instantiated view controller instead of switching the window's rootViewController.

How to push an UIViewController to UISplitViewController

I want to push an UINavigationController object into an UISplitViewController, but I got the message below:
2014-04-30 02:25:11.215 test_demo[483:70b] Split View Controllers cannot be pushed to a Navigation Controller <UINavigationController: 0x8d34360>.
This is my push method:
- (IBAction)toggleToSplitView:(id)sender {
SplitViewController *splitViewController = [[SplitViewController alloc] init];
[self.navigationController pushViewController:splitViewController animated:YES];
}
In fact, I want to design a login view with a UIViewController, then, I want to push to a UISplitViewController. Anyone who can help me to solve this problem? Any help will be much appreciated.
man. I don't think this is a good idea to push an UIViewController to UISplitViewController. if you must to do it like this. you can use this method:
SplitViewController *splitViewController = [[SplitViewController alloc] init];
[self.view.window setRootViewController:splitViewController];
but, I think this is not a perfect solution. Especially, when you need to add some custom animation during push between different ViewController. thus, maybe you should custom a splitView and added it to an UIViewController. there are many sample code in github for custom UISplitViewController.
https://github.com/Alterplay/APSplitViewController
https://github.com/palaniraja/cUISplitViewController
I hope this help for you.
As the message suggests, you cannot do that.
What you can do is display your SplitViewController first and then present your LoginView from your SplitViewController without animation.
Actually, you're trying to push a UISplitViewController into UINavigationController object. Not vice versa. And it's not allowed. That's what error message says.
UISplitViewController is a specific controller which can be used only as a root view controller in the navigation stack. Also, it can be used only in iPad applications.
-(void)pushView :(UIViewController *)splitViewController{
self.rootViewControllerPre=self.window.rootViewController;
_window.rootViewController=splitViewController;
}
-(void)popView{
_window.rootViewController=_rootViewControllerPre;
}

Returning to the root view controller

I am writing a turn-based game for the iOS platform. The client communicates with a remote server using the CocoaAsyncSocket API. Right now I work on this case: the client has been inactive for a while, and has been disconnected from the server due to timeout. If that's the case, I wish to pop back to the login view when the app enters the foreground, to let the user log back in again.
I assume I have to do this kind of work in the -(void)applicationWillEnterForeground of my app's delegate. Checking whether I'm connected or not is not a problem, but I don't know how to dismiss every presenting view controller to take me back to the root view (which happens to be the login view).
My view controllers are presented modally, but I also have two navigation controllers with table views including push segues.
Any help with this problem is highly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
The jarring way to do it is just replace the rootViewController with a new login view controller.
- (void)applicationWillEnterForeground:(UIApplication *)application
{
if ([self isDisconnected]) {
self.window.rootViewController = [MyLoginController new];
}
}
For storyboards, assuming your initial storyboard is the login storyboard.
- (void)applicationWillEnterForeground:(UIApplication *)application
{
if ([self isDisconnected]) {
UIStoryboard *storyboard = self.window.rootViewController.storyboard
self.window.rootViewController = [storyboard instantiateInitialViewController];
}
}
Depending on your UX, this may or may not be appropriate.
If all of your content views are presented modally from the root view controller (which doesn't sound like a great idea) then from the app delegate (indeed in applicationWillEnterForeground),
// if we need to login
UIViewController *rootViewController = self.window.rootViewController;
[rootViewController dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:nil];
If the root view controller isn't presenting modally then you need to dismiss in the appropriate way. If any other 'child' view controller is presenting modally then it should dismiss. I guess dismissing when that view controller changes parent view controller will work. You may need to add a notification to inform all view controllers that everything is being torn down.

viewWillAppear, viewDidAppear not called with pushViewController [duplicate]

I've read numerous posts about people having problems with viewWillAppear when you do not create your view hierarchy just right. My problem is I can't figure out what that means.
If I create a RootViewController and call addSubView on that controller, I would expect the added view(s) to be wired up for viewWillAppear events.
Does anyone have an example of a complex programmatic view hierarchy that successfully receives viewWillAppear events at every level?
Apple's Docs state:
Warning: If the view belonging to a view controller is added to a view hierarchy directly, the view controller will not receive this message. If you insert or add a view to the view hierarchy, and it has a view controller, you should send the associated view controller this message directly. Failing to send the view controller this message will prevent any associated animation from being displayed.
The problem is that they don't describe how to do this. What does "directly" mean? How do you "indirectly" add a view?
I am fairly new to Cocoa and iPhone so it would be nice if there were useful examples from Apple besides the basic Hello World crap.
If you use a navigation controller and set its delegate, then the view{Will,Did}{Appear,Disappear} methods are not invoked.
You need to use the navigation controller delegate methods instead:
navigationController:willShowViewController:animated:
navigationController:didShowViewController:animated:
I've run into this same problem. Just send a viewWillAppear message to your view controller before you add it as a subview. (There is one BOOL parameter which tells the view controller if it's being animated to appear or not.)
[myViewController viewWillAppear:NO];
Look at RootViewController.m in the Metronome example.
(I actually found Apple's example projects great. There's a LOT more than HelloWorld ;)
I finally found a solution for this THAT WORKS!
UINavigationControllerDelegate
I think the gist of it is to set your nav control's delegate to the viewcontroller it is in, and implement UINavigationControllerDelegate and it's two methods. Brilliant! I'm so excited i finally found a solution!
Thanks iOS 13.
ViewWillDisappear, ViewDidDisappear, ViewWillAppear and
ViewDidAppear won't get called on a presenting view controller on
iOS 13 which uses a new modal presentation that doesn't cover the
whole screen.
Credits are going to Arek Holko. He really saved my day.
I just had the same issue. In my application I have 2 navigation controllers and pushing the same view controller in each of them worked in one case and not in the other. I mean that when pushing the exact same view controller in the first UINavigationController, viewWillAppear was called but not when pushed in the second navigation controller.
Then I came across this post UINavigationController should call viewWillAppear/viewWillDisappear methods
And realized that my second navigation controller did redefine viewWillAppear. Screening the code showed that I was not calling
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
I added it and it worked !
The documentation says:
If you override this method, you must call super at some point in your implementation.
I've been using a navigation controller. When I want to either descend to another level of data or show my custom view I use the following:
[self.navigationController pushViewController:<view> animated:<BOOL>];
When I do this, I do get the viewWillAppear function to fire. I suppose this qualifies as "indirect" because I'm not calling the actual addSubView method myself. I don't know if this is 100% applicable to your application since I can't tell if you're using a navigation controller, but maybe it will provide a clue.
Firstly, the tab bar should be at the root level, ie, added to the window, as stated in the Apple documentation. This is key for correct behavior.
Secondly, you can use UITabBarDelegate / UINavigationBarDelegate to forward the notifications on manually, but I found that to get the whole hierarchy of view calls to work correctly, all I had to do was manually call
[tabBarController viewWillAppear:NO];
[tabBarController viewDidAppear:NO];
and
[navBarController viewWillAppear:NO];
[navBarController viewDidAppear:NO];
.. just ONCE before setting up the view controllers on the respective controller (right after allocation). From then on, it correctly called these methods on its child view controllers.
My hierarchy is like this:
window
UITabBarController (subclass of)
UIViewController (subclass of) // <-- manually calls [navController viewWill/DidAppear
UINavigationController (subclass of)
UIViewController (subclass of) // <-- still receives viewWill/Did..etc all the way down from a tab switch at the top of the chain without needing to use ANY delegate methods
Just calling the mentioned methods on the tab/nav controller the first time ensured that ALL the events were forwarded correctly. It stopped me needing to call them manually from the UINavigationBarDelegate / UITabBarControllerDelegate methods.
Sidenote:
Curiously, when it didn't work, the private method
- (void)transitionFromViewController:(UIViewController*)aFromViewController toViewController:(UIViewController*)aToViewController
.. which you can see from the callstack on a working implementation, usually calls the viewWill/Did.. methods but didn't until I performed the above (even though it was called).
I think it is VERY important that the UITabBarController is at window level though and the documents seem to back this up.
Hope that was clear(ish), happy to answer further questions.
As no answer is accepted and people (like I did) land here I give my variation. Though I am not sure that was the original problem. When the navigation controller is added as a subview to a another view you must call the viewWillAppear/Dissappear etc. methods yourself like this:
- (void) viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
[subNavCntlr viewWillAppear:animated];
}
- (void) viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewWillDisappear:animated];
[subNavCntlr viewWillDisappear:animated];
}
Just to make the example complete. This code appears in my ViewController where I created and added the the navigation controller into a view that I placed on the view.
- (void)viewDidLoad {
// This is the root View Controller
rootTable *rootTableController = [[rootTable alloc]
initWithStyle:UITableViewStyleGrouped];
subNavCntlr = [[UINavigationController alloc]
initWithRootViewController:rootTableController];
[rootTableController release];
subNavCntlr.view.frame = subNavContainer.bounds;
[subNavContainer addSubview:subNavCntlr.view];
[super viewDidLoad];
}
the .h looks like this
#interface navTestViewController : UIViewController <UINavigationControllerDelegate> {
IBOutlet UIView *subNavContainer;
UINavigationController *subNavCntlr;
}
#end
In the nib file I have the view and below this view I have a label a image and the container (another view) where i put the controller in. Here is how it looks. I had to scramble some things as this was work for a client.
Views are added "directly" by calling [view addSubview:subview].
Views are added "indirectly" by methods such as tab bars or nav bars that swap subviews.
Any time you call [view addSubview:subviewController.view], you should then call [subviewController viewWillAppear:NO] (or YES as your case may be).
I had this problem when I implemented my own custom root-view management system for a subscreen in a game. Manually adding the call to viewWillAppear cured my problem.
Correct way to do this is using UIViewController containment api.
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
// Do any additional setup after loading the view.
UIViewController *viewController = ...;
[self addChildViewController:viewController];
[self.view addSubview:viewController.view];
[viewController didMoveToParentViewController:self];
}
I use this code for push and pop view controllers:
push:
[self.navigationController pushViewController:detaiViewController animated:YES];
[detailNewsViewController viewWillAppear:YES];
pop:
[[self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:YES] viewWillAppear:YES];
.. and it works fine for me.
A very common mistake is as follows.
You have one view, UIView* a, and another one, UIView* b.
You add b to a as a subview.
If you try to call viewWillAppear in b, it will never be fired, because it is a subview of a
iOS 13 bit my app in the butt here. If you've noticed behavior change as of iOS 13 just set the following before you push it:
yourVC.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationFullScreen;
You may also need to set it in your .storyboard in the Attributes inspector (set Presentation to Full Screen).
This will make your app behave as it did in prior versions of iOS.
I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think that adding a view to the view hierarchy directly means calling -addSubview: on the view controller's view (e.g., [viewController.view addSubview:anotherViewController.view]) instead of pushing a new view controller onto the navigation controller's stack.
I think that adding a subview doesn't necessarily mean that the view will appear, so there is not an automatic call to the class's method that it will
I think what they mean "directly" is by hooking things up just the same way as the xcode "Navigation Application" template does, which sets the UINavigationController as the sole subview of the application's UIWindow.
Using that template is the only way I've been able to get the Will/Did/Appear/Disappear methods called on the object ViewControllers upon push/pops of those controllers in the UINavigationController. None of the other solutions in the answers here worked for me, including implementing them in the RootController and passing them through to the (child) NavigationController. Those functions (will/did/appear/disappear) were only called in my RootController upon showing/hiding the top-level VCs, my "login" and navigationVCs, not the sub-VCs in the navigation controller, so I had no opportunity to "pass them through" to the Nav VC.
I ended up using the UINavigationController's delegate functionality to look for the particular transitions that required follow-up functionality in my app, and that works, but it requires a bit more work in order to get both the disappear and appear functionality "simulated".
Also it's a matter of principle to get it to work after banging my head against this problem for hours today. Any working code snippets using a custom RootController and a child navigation VC would be much appreciated.
In case this helps anyone. I had a similar problem where my ViewWillAppear is not firing on a UITableViewController. After a lot of playing around, I realized that the problem was that the UINavigationController that is controlling my UITableView is not on the root view. Once I fix that, it is now working like a champ.
I just had this problem myself and it took me 3 full hours (2 of which googling) to fix it.
What turned out to help was to simply delete the app from the device/simulator, clean and then run again.
Hope that helps
[self.navigationController setDelegate:self];
Set the delegate to the root view controller.
In my case problem was with custom transition animation.
When set modalPresentationStyle = .custom viewWillAppear not called
in custom transition animation class need call methods:
beginAppearanceTransition and endAppearanceTransition
For Swift. First create the protocol to call what you wanted to call in viewWillAppear
protocol MyViewWillAppearProtocol{func myViewWillAppear()}
Second, create the class
class ForceUpdateOnViewAppear: NSObject, UINavigationControllerDelegate {
func navigationController(_ navigationController: UINavigationController, willShow viewController: UIViewController, animated: Bool){
if let updatedCntllr: MyViewWillAppearProtocol = viewController as? MyViewWillAppearProtocol{
updatedCntllr.myViewWillAppear()
}
}
}
Third, make the instance of ForceUpdateOnViewAppear to be the member of the appropriate class that have the access to the Navigation Controller and exists as long as Navigation controller exists. It may be for example the root view controller of the navigation controller or the class that creates or present it. Then assign the instance of ForceUpdateOnViewAppear to the Navigation Controller delegate property as early as possible.
In my case that was just a weird bug on the ios 12.1 emulator. Disappeared after launching on real device.
I have created a class that solves this problem.
Just set it as a delegate of your navigation controller, and implement simple one or two methods in your view controller - that will get called when the view is about to be shown or has been shown via NavigationController
Here's the GIST showing the code
ViewWillAppear is an override method of UIViewController class so adding a subView will not call viewWillAppear, but when you present, push , pop, show , setFront Or popToRootViewController from a viewController then viewWillAppear for presented viewController will get called.
My issue was that viewWillAppear was not called when unwinding from a segue. The answer was to put a call to viewWillAppear(true) in the unwind segue in the View Controller that you segueing back to
#IBAction func unwind(for unwindSegue: UIStoryboardSegue, ViewController subsequentVC: Any) {
viewWillAppear(true)
}
I'm not sure this is the same problem that I solved.
In some occasions, method doesn't executed with normal way such as "[self methodOne]".
Try
- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
[self performSelector:#selector(methodOne)
withObject:nil afterDelay:0];
}
You should only have 1 UIViewController active at any time. Any subviews you want to manipulate should be exactly that - subVIEWS - i.e. UIView.
I use a simlple technique for managing my view hierarchy and have yet to run into a problem since I started doing things this way. There are 2 key points:
a single UIViewController should be used to manage "a screen's worth"
of your app
use UINavigationController for changing views
What do I mean by "a screen's worth"? It's a bit vague on purpose, but generally it's a feature or section of your app. If you've got a few screens with the same background image but different overlays/popups etc., that should be 1 view controller and several child views. You should never find yourself working with 2 view controllers. Note you can still instantiate a UIView in one view controller and add it as a subview of another view controller if you want certain areas of the screen to be shown in multiple view controllers.
As for UINavigationController - this is your best friend! Turn off the navigation bar and specify NO for animated, and you have an excellent way of switching screens on demand. You can push and pop view controllers if they're in a hierarchy, or you can prepare an array of view controllers (including an array containing a single VC) and set it to be the view stack using setViewControllers. This gives you total freedom to change VC's, while gaining all the advantages of working within Apple's expected model and getting all events etc. fired properly.
Here's what I do every time when I start an app:
start from a window-based app
add a UINavigationController as the window's rootViewController
add whatever I want my first UIViewController to be as the rootViewController of the nav
controller
(note starting from window-based is just a personal preference - I like to construct things myself so I know exactly how they are built. It should work fine with view-based template)
All events fire correctly and basically life is good. You can then spend all your time writing the important bits of your app and not messing about trying to manually hack view hierarchies into shape.

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