Till now, I've been using controller or controllers like UITabbarController, or UINavigation controller to manage the UiviewController hierarchy. however, in the current project, i've been presented with a situation where my friends are recommending that I do away with controller of controllers and instead instantiate sub-UIViewControllers within the RootViewController and keep them as attributes. My question is whether this is a good practice MVC wise and memory management wise? (this is for iOS 5.0 with ARC)
The project requires a screen to have a header, main content area, and footer. the header and footer present dynamic content, but are the same for all screens but in the main content area, different screens can be presented either transitioning in from the right (like navigation controller would do it) or would appear modally.
I've tried to stick to MVC with one ViewController managing one view hierarchy... the above seems to go against it, but it seems to help in the situation.. so is this the right way to go or am I missing some other more optimal way?? Pls help
Thanks for your help in advance..
Why even have to have references to the view controllers themselves if you can just keep a reference to the view they manage? Sure it breaks MVC, but I love being able to divide reusable interface classes and then simply add their view's as subviews. It works, so long as you are smart about the whole thing. Is there anything specific about this pattern you'd like help with?
Go through this blog..Hope it helps you,
http://borkwarellc.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/qff-kitchen-mvc-part-1/
Related
Is it a good practise to creates views in xcode and hide them and when required show them?
I am asking that because I prefer to create views visually and not in code.
If the view is to complex(a lot of subviews) should I create a new view controller to it?
I know there isn't a specify question here but I really need a clarification on this matter.
Regards
One of my first iOS applications had a tab bar and views that the user could switch between. Originally it was done by hiding and showing the right views depending on what the user pressed on the tab bar. This ended up being a complex disaster.
I then rewrote the app so that each tab bar view had its own UIViewController with its own set of views. That turned out to be so much easier to manage. (I also changed from using Interface Builder to straight code for creating the views, but that's beside the point and you can continue to use IB if you want.)
As for me, I prefer folowing practice:
Usually, a use storyboards,where views are placed, but if a view is complex, I create a separate XIB file, arrange all subviews there, and then in storyboard drag an UIView subclass and connect my XIB view with it.It helps to avoid mess in storyboard.
As for hiding views, I also don't recommend such practice as it can become very complex to understand your code and all those views are allocated when XIB is loaded, so the mobile developing rule "do as lazy as u can" is not met. We should try to spend as less memory as it's possible.
UIView is the best way to create iOS app, esp. if you want to reuse the code.
For example if you have same view to present in iPad n iPhone then using UIView can result in lots of similar code in View-controller
In another case if your view might need to have multiple table view it can be quite complex to handle each with delegates in ViewController. But separate view will solve this problem.
I have made my 1st open source code after learning how to use View
https://github.com/bishalg/BGRadioList
which I had learned from
http://www.raywenderlich.com/1768/uiview-tutorial-for-ios-how-to-make-a-custom-uiview-in-ios-5-a-5-star-rating-view
About the hiding view - I have used lots of hide and show view codes in my apps but believe me at one point it will become complex and unmanageable if you have lots of views.
I am exploring the design options for an iPAD application with multiple views on the different part of the main screen. I am going to have different ViewController for each of the view. UI is quite different from what any of the available view controllers (UISplitViewController, UINavigationController etc.) provide. I have been reading about the container extension api of UIViewController (especially addChildViewController):
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#DOCUMENTATION/UIKit/Reference/UIViewController_Class/Reference/Reference.html
(Look for "Implementing a Container View Controller")
However, it seems to me that this functionality is mainly designed for applications with UI that transition from one view to another (transitionFromViewController...). In my case, all of the views are visible at the same time. However, they do interact with each other. So my questions:
Am I missing something w.r.t. container extension of View Controller? I will still probably end up using this just to keep the list of child view controllers but don't see much value.
Can you recommend any other api/pattern that I should be using?
Thank you.
You can easy access to childViewController.
self.childViewControllers will return an array with all childs.
I asked similar question couple days ago: Maybe this will help you:
Get container VC instead of view
Take a look at http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/ViewControllerPGforiPhoneOS/CreatingCustomContainerViewControllers/CreatingCustomContainerViewControllers.html.
Add your various view controllers to self.childViewControllers and add the views of the child controllers as subviews of self.view.
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).
I started to explore the UISplitViewController class with a new master detail project in XCode, and I would like to replace the detail view's content with another UIViewControllers. I wrote it in this way (self is the detail viewcontroller and controller is the uiviewcontroller which I want to replace the first one with):
self.view = controller.view;
My question is: is it a proper way, will Apple accept it? If it is not, how could I do it better?
I am also building an iPad app with Master - Detail View Controllers in a UIIntelligentSplitViewController. As UISplitViewController doesn't support well while changing to different orientations, using UIIntelligentSplitViewController solves the issue with orientation change. See more here.
I have read on one of apple documentation and also a in best practices that we should use Only one MasterView and DetailView Controllers in entire app, and write code in such a way that all data are loaded in these two views according to the object selected.
But loading all data in same detail view might be a lot of code. So, I am also in search for answer for efficiently writing code to load in same detail view controller. However currently I am implementing only two views to show net data.
If there is any other efficient way to accomplish it, please do mention. Thanks.
You could replace the detail view controller where it is setup in your app delegate "didFinishLaunchingWithOptionsMethod". Your method would probably also work but is creating unnecessary overhead. The auto generated code they provide default's to a navigation controller on the left and a view controller on the right but you can change that to whatever you need. I have a project where I have two navigation controllers.
I have a design question. I have a scroll view that I want to use as a means of navigation. I.e. the user can slide between screens. At present, I am creating view controllers and putting their views directly on the scroll view:
aViewController.view.frame=CGRectMake(0,0,320,200);
[self.myScrollView addSubview:[aViewController view]]
Etc, for all 3 view controllers.
I know this isn't best practice. But I can't think of any other way of doing it. Ideally I would like to get the same behaviour as a navigation controller except the fact that I'll be using a scroll view. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
You have to be aware that this breaks certain UIViewController behaviors because these child view controllers do not get informed about interface rotation events and their viewWill/Did(Dis)Appear: methods will not work.
The alternative (until iOS 4.x at least) is to not use UIViewController subclasses for these subviews. You could easily create your own custom controller class (derived from NSObject) to manage a child view.
It's debatable whether that approach makes it easier overall, though.
I'm guessing what you're trying to achieve is something similar to this app?
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fanhattan-for-ipad/id436928538?mt=8
This app works in the same manner, using a scroll view for navigation. You can analyze that app, you'd get some ideas from it, i'm sure.