Situation: two UITabBarController's, each with their own tabs, but last tab in both is identical so want one UIViewController to show content.
Issue at runtime: Shared item only appears in one of the tab sets when shown.
Question: anyone know a way to make this work?
Link to external graphic of storyboard setup: (sorry, don't have enough reputation to post images here!)
Storyboard graphic
An Xcode project with that storyboard:
XCode Project
Each tab content item has it's own UIViewController class. They contain no code except the line to make the back buttons work.
(Yes, I know this is odd. Real situation is an iPad app where tab controllers are shown in popovers; popovers are "property editors" where different objects have different properties, but all share a common set of properties... thus one tab for "unique" props, one shared tab content for the "common" props all objects have.)
I've found a couple ways around this to get the effect I want, but if this storyboard worked it would be a much easier solution.
-- Other info, somewhat unrelated to question --
Alternate solution I'm using: TabBarControllers only link to one VC as tab content. When that tab VC loads, I use code to (a) instantiate shared VC from storyboard by identifier, (b) add that new VC object to the TabBarController via [tabController setViewControllers:list animated:NO].
(Another possible solution I like even less: not using a TabBarController, and presenting content VC's with my own "tab" graphic drawn into them, each showing "myself" as selected. Yuk.)
So I have a working solution, I'm just curious as to why this doesn't work (just a known thing in iOS API, or some magical property setting that might render it functional?)
You can't put the same view controller instance into two tab controllers. The problem is that a view (UIView) instance can only have one parent view (superview). When you try to add the view controller to the 2nd tab, the view controller's view gets removed from its first parent (the first tab) and then added to the 2nd tab.
I stumbled upon your thread while running into the same issue today...
The solution is to just make a duplicate of the view controller in story board and attach the duplicate to the other tab bar controller.
I just did it and it works...
I think the 'rdelmar' is right about this... copy it and set it ..!!
I ran across this same issue today. I managed to come up with a workaround that seems to do the trick. The key is to add a layer of separation between the tabbar and the controller you want to reuse. From each tabbar, I created a relationship to a distinct UIViewController with a container view. Then you can do an 'embed' segue from the container to the controller you actually want to reuse as the tab view. It is not quite as clean as a direct connection (not sure why that is not supported) since you do have to create a controller class for each reuse case. It is still a better solution than the nightmare of having to duplicate the actual tab view ( as well as any additional views that connect to it) for every use.
Hope this helps. Let me know if anyone needs more details.
Related
i have one question about using multiple segues to one ViewController. Ill try to create an article management, so you can add/edit/delete articles.
When you add a new article you can choose between a maincategory and a subcategory, choose the article and then edit some inital values.
but if ill try to edit one of my selected articles, i would like to jump to the "latest" ViewController in navigation stack.
I thought i could easily create another segue to my last viewController, but ill always get an error when i try to load this segue (i guess this could be a problem with the existing NavigationController).
I could provide some code, but i dont know if this is a possible solution to solve such things - or is there a better way?
Thanks in advance.
You can, but the new segue should take you to a navigation controller that just contains the last view controller (as the root). In this way you are duplicating the normal situation but with only 1 view controller.
If you wanted to allow the last view controller to have a 'back' button which took you to some 'earlier' screens (if that makes any kind of sense in your app) then you would need to write some code. It's more likely that other screens should be accessed via bar button items or similar (which would also likely be done in code).
When a view controller (VC) has hordes of views and subviews it becomes very difficult to modify a subview because I can't even see it completely (it is hidden behind some other subview). For example please have a look at current state of one of my VC:
I can't see highlighted "Congratulations - UILabel" or its UIView.
Is there a way I can see a specific view clearly (may be at the top of all the other views)?
Generally I drag drop a UIView on a different dummy blank VC, design view completely on that VC with all constraints and finally drag drop it back to my actual VC. This works most of the times but it seems like an inefficient approach to me.
I've observed that seeing overlapping views used to be easier in iOS6 but it is Very difficult in iOS7. Is there any feature in iOS7 Interface Builder that I am missing? Thanks for your precious time.
Update: Would Spark Inspector help me here? I am newbie to development so don't want to waste my time trying and understanding new plugin if it doesn't help me achieve what I want. Thanks.
This is widely considered one of the weak points of Xcode's new Storyboards feature. They're great for apps that require a large number of simple controllers, but they become difficult to work with when your interfaces get complicated. Most experienced developers use Storyboards in some places and individual controller XIBs in others, depending on what they're building.
Here's how to solve your problem:
Step 1. Break the View Controller out of your Storyboard into it's own XIB
From the File menu, choose New File and choose an Empty XIB file (from the User Interface section). Name it "YourExactVCClassName.xib".
Go to your Storyboard. Copy the entire View of your View Controller and then delete it.
Paste the View Controller into your new XIB. Change the class of "File's Owner" to be your View Controller, and set it's "view" property by drawing an outlet from the view to File's Owner.
When your app runs, it will try to instantiate the view controller
from your storyboard. When it realizes there's no view in the
storyboard for that controller, it will automatically find the file
MyViewController.xib and load it from there.
Step 2. Organize the contents of your main view into detached views that make sense.
In your example above, it looks like you have different views for different states of the game (game over, high score, etc.) Take each of those and remove them from the main view. With your controller in it's own XIB file, you can just drag the view out in to the whitespace around your controller. Each view you drag out becomes a top level object in the XIB file that you can design and see easily.
You're no longer stuck with an iPhone-5-sized workspace.
Create IBOutlets for each of your detached, top level views so you can reference them in your controller.
In viewDidLoad, programmatically add each of the separate views to your main view. Note that you may want to set their frames, make some of them invisible, etc. You have to write more code, but it's generally worth it for an easily maintainable XIB.
I'm trying to make my first Xamarin iPhone app. I have 2 views right now and i'm not sure how to be wire it up and then switch to the 2nd one.
AuthenticationViewController. This is a simple login/create account view.
TabbedViewController. A few sub views all connected by a tab controller. eg. listview, settings and about/info.
right now, i'm setting the root = new AuthenticationViewController and that works fine. just not sure how to swap roots and if this is the correct way to do things.
or should this all be done with a storyboard (which i think is an overkill, here)?
The user should always understand where he is. For that Apple suggests animations removing old content and showing new content. One possibility is the UINavigationController. You can create an empty UINavigationController with your AuthenticationViewController as Root. When the authentication succeeded, you can push your new ViewController (which is the TabbedViewController) on the stack. If you have a log-off in your TabbedViewController, you come back by PopViewController.
The other alternative is the PresentModalViewController. In the appearing controller you define the modal transitions style. This can be anything and especially for this a FlipView-Animation is in my opinion not a bad choice.
All this exists in Xamarin like in iOS.
StoryBoard is doing the same thing but visualizes what should happen underneath. (like InterfaceBuilder for the ViewController itself).
At least in objective-c you can change the root view controller of the window without problems. The only drawback is that you cannot apply transitions doing things this way. But it is totally fine to do so.
I have the following setup in my app:
My initial view controller is a UITabBarController.
the tabs:
1)UINavigationController->PostListVC
2)UINavigationController->CategoriesListVC
3)UINavigationController->PostListVC
4)UINavigationController->PostListVC
5)UINavigationController->MoreViewController
As you can see, 3 tabs contain the same viewController class, but should not contain the same view controller object - the view will display different information based on information he gets form the AppDelegate.
What I did is I created 5 UINavigationControllers, connected them to the uitabbarcontroller, then created a rootViewController segue for 3 of them to the same PostListVC View - that way I don't need to maintain 3 designs of the same view.
The problem that I get is that only the first PostListVC gets created properly ( the leftmost in the tab bar ) - the other tabs that point to a PostListVC just show a black screen.
I've tried to illustrate the way I wire-up the storyboard using a 3-tab example:
As you can see, both the upper-most and lower-most views are connected to PostListVC.
I do not know what the issue is. I assume I'm using storyboards somewhat wrongly.
Does anybody know how I can fix this?
Thanks!
EDIT:
I have created a simple, example project (Xcode 5) that illustartes this issue:
http://www.speedyshare.com/Srwfg/TabBarProblem.zip
EDIT 2:
A modified version of the example, showing the problem with the offered solution:
http://speedy.sh/JkdGC/TabBarProblem-2.zip
There is no way to create different tabBarItems with this method, and there's no way to place the barItems so that they're not in a row - even if you try to chagne the order of segues.
As you said you need three different instances of PostListVC then you should create three different viewcontrollers of type PostListVC and connect each tab to its own. The class is the same but each tab gets its own instance.
I have got your example program to work BUT I don't know if the solution will work for your full project. Hopefully, it will put you on the correct track.
The solution is to have ONE (1) Navigation Controller / embedded root view but TWO (2) segues from the Tab Bar Controller. Here's the picture:
It looks like there's a problem with multiple UINavigationControllers linking to the same UIViewController. But no problem with the same UINavigationController linking to the same UIViewController provided they are instantiated separately through the UITabBarController.
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).