iOS ZXingWidget - use view of ZXingWidgetViewController in own ViewController.view as subview - ios

Question

I am trying to use the iOS zxing Widget for QR Code Scanning. I have a ViewController which is pushed as an Item in my UINavigationController or presented Modally from another ViewController. This ViewController has a SegmentedControl for 3 different views. Two of those Views are UIWebViews which load simple Websites, nothing special about them.
The selection looks something like this:
- (IBAction)segmentedControlValueChanged:(id)sender {
NSString *urlString;
ZXingWidgetController *widController;
QRCodeReader* qrcodeReader;
NSSet *readers;
switch (segmentedControl.selectedSegmentIndex) {
case 0:
[self.view bringSubviewToFront:self.productSearchWebView];
urlString = [[SACommunicationService sharedCommunicationService] getURLforKey:kURLTypeProductSearch];
[self.productSearchWebView loadRequest:[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:urlString]]];
break;
case 1:
[self.view bringSubviewToFront:self.marketSearchWebView];
urlString = [[SACommunicationService sharedCommunicationService] getURLforKey:kURLTypeMarketSearch];
[self.marketSearchWebView loadRequest:[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:urlString]]];
break;
case 2:
widController = [[ZXingWidgetController alloc] initWithDelegate:self showCancel:YES OneDMode:NO];
qrcodeReader = [[QRCodeReader alloc] init];
readers = [[NSSet alloc] initWithObjects:qrcodeReader,nil];
widController.readers = readers;
[self.QRCodeScannerView addSubview:widController.view];
[self.view bringSubviewToFront:self.QRCodeScannerView];
break;
default:
break;
}
}
I tried to debug and go step by step and find out where the problem comes from:
Decoder (which is part of the underlying ZXing logic) tries to call "failedToDecodeImage:" from its delegate (which should be the ZXingWidgetController class) and crashes (EXC_BAD_ACCESS)
While stepping through I found out that the "cancelled" Method of the ZXingWidgetController gets called. Now I don't really know why this method gets called. The Widget shouldn't stop right after initializing and starting the decoder.

Answer 1

So the answer is a very simple one.
I was using iOS 5.0 and ARC. The ZXing ViewController is instantiated locally inside the method. Since the ViewController itself does not get viewed ARC sets a release at the end of the method and the ViewController gets freed. Since the ViewController is released, the view which was retained by the ViewController will be released as well. Cancelled is called because the Main ViewController does not exist anymore and calling some method on a nil pointer results in a BAD_ACCESS.
The Solution here was to set the ZXingViewController as a global strong property. This kept the object from being released right at the end of that method and thus the view which was added as a subview to another ViewControllers view was held in memory as long as the ViewController was alive.

Answer 2

You're not supposed to add controller views as subviews of another view. You're suposed to present controllers using the various UIViewController mechanisms.
By doing what you're doing, you're violating UIViewController contracts. The widget isn't getting things like viewWillAppear, viewDidAppear, etc.
If you want to use ZXing at the UIView/CALayer level instead of the UIViewController level, look at the classes in the ZXing objc directory.

Answer 3

Try this... also in the .h file make this ZXingWidgetController *widController;
And also to the viewScanner set clipToBounds to true.
-(void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewDidAppear:animated];
[self performSelector:#selector(openScanner) withObject:nil afterDelay:0.5];
}
-(void)openScanner
{
self.widController = [[ZXingWidgetController alloc] initMiniWithDelegate:self showCancel:NO OneDMode:YES];
NSMutableSet *readers = [[NSMutableSet alloc ] init];
MultiFormatReader* reader = [[MultiFormatReader alloc] init];
[readers addObject:reader];
self.widController.readers = readers;
[viewScanner addSubview:self.widController.view];
}