I was hoping someone could help a noobie out.
I am trying to create an iPhone/iPad app that uses tabs as its main navigation. The first tab will be kind of a home screen with basic info and a feedback button etc. The other tabs (3-4 tabs) each need to display a different "section" of the app. Each section will display a table view and navigation controller (using Core Data). These table views are unrelated to each other, each using different tables from the database (sqlite).
To illustrate this lets say tab 1 is the apps Home, tab 2 lists your grocery list, tab 3 lists recipes and tab 4 lists coupons available. They all fit together in the app but they come from completely different tables. Each navigation controller that appears on each tab is Completely different. Im using it like secondary navigation within the tab.
So my question is, does anyone have any tutorials that illustrates this technique? And if not do I have to create a different fetchedResultsController for each tab? I started the project using the Tabbed application template, I then created another dummy project using the master detail template and added the master detail code and xibs to my tabbed project. So I now have tabs that display the generic time stamp entity that comes with the master detail template however I cannot seem to get the tabs to display different data.
Also how can I create a navigation controller for each table view / tab? All of the documentation says to initialize it inside of the AppDelegate however if I put it there how can I get a different controller for each tab? Do I declare 3-4 controllers in the app delegate and some how assign them to each table view? I have not seen an example of this anywhere even though it makes sense. Tutorials would be much appreciated.
Thank you so much in advance. Im just stuck here. :(
So to start off each tab (I assume you're talking about a UITabBarController) will have it's own UINavigationController->UIViewController. I don't know of any tutorials about using the master-detail inside a tab and I haven't done it personally, but for your second question about navigation controllers inside your tab you would do the following:
Start off using a tab template using storyboard.
Inside your storyboard you can see that they have the two view controllers and they are tied in and stuff. I would just delete them as they aren't needed.
From the right side you'll drag in however many UINavigation controllers (the gold ones) you need. When you drag it in it should bring in two views, the controller and the root view.
From the tab bar controller control+drag to the navigation controller and connect it to Relation-view controllers. Do this for all the navigation controllers
Your storyboard should look somewhat like this:
You now have all view structure set up. So you'll now need to create all the classes for those. As you mentioned you'll create a recipe view controller, shopping list view controller...
Set the blank views to use the classes you just created created. From each of these classes you can push views to their navigation controller and it will push it onto that stack and if you switch tabs you'll start where that one left off.
Inside of each of these Classes there will need to be a NSfetchedResultsController that will tie into acore data database (Housed in the delegate or another class) and control that table.
Here is a great tutorial I've used for setting up my first nsfetchedresultscontroller. It goes through the entire process from start to finish.
http://www.raywenderlich.com/999/core-data-tutorial-how-to-use-nsfetchedresultscontroller
I hope that gets you off your stuck phase. let me know if there is anything unclear on the set up.
Related
I am trying to create an app for iOS using Swift but running into problems with the very basics.
To keep it simple I just want the app to initially be a single view application with a button and some sort of list view on the page. I believe a TableView is what is recommended here. When I click the button, I just want it to populate the list/table view with some entries, that's it. To start with, I don't care if these entries are hard-coded, I just want to get something working.
I have been looking at different samples but I am getting confused. Some of them seem to suggest using a TableViewController others don't. When I use a tableview controller, the UI I had created seems to get completely replaced with just an empty tableview list and the button is gone.
I previously have developed apps in Windows phone and found it a lot easier. I'd just add a listview object and in the click method of button, add the items programmatically etc. But this is my first time trying to create an iOS app and it seems a lot more confusing. There are delegates, controllers, views all seemingly needed in order to do something very simple.
Can anyone give me some basic step by step instructions about how to add a tableview to an application and load some data into it through a button click?
Make sure you are clear about the difference between a view and a view controller.
iOS uses the MVC design pattern (Model View Controller).
A view object displays contents to the user and responds to user interaction.
A model object stores state data.
A controller object drives the app logic and mediates between the model and the view.
A UITableViewController is a special subclass of a UIViewController who's job is to manage a table view. It has some extra support in it that makes it a good choice for managing a table view, BUT... there is one annoying thing about it. It is designed so the ONLY view it can manage is a table view. You can't use a UITableViewController if you want to add buttons, labels, and other UI elements to your screen outside of the table view.
What I usually do is to create a create a table view controller, create a separate regular view controller, add a container view to the regular view controller, and then use an embed segue to embed the table view controller inside the view controller. (you just control-drag from the container view to the table view controller.) That way you get the best of both worlds. You may want to create a protocol that the table view controller would use to communicate with it's parent view controller.
You should be able to find a tutorial online on setting up a table view controller as a child of another view controller using container views and embed segues. It's quite easy.
I'm trying to build an app that has lots of similarities to the Facebook App in terms of the "Storyboard". I'm tempted to do everything in code as I know best but I'd really like to figure out how to storyboard these more complicated UI's.
The Facebook App starts with a login view. When you log in, you get a tab view. In the main tab view, you have a table view. Within each table view are a user, post, and comment buttons which push to a new view.
So the way I am understanding it is we have UINavigationController with the .navigationBarHidden set to false. The first view controller here is the loginViewController. When the login button is pressed and the user is logged in, we performSegueWithIdentifier to a UITabBarController. The first tab is a UINavigationController with a UITableViewController as the first view controller. Clicking user, post, or comment pushes the appropriate view controller onto the NavigationController.
This all begins to seems a bit more complicated than just writing this all out in code. I'm also not even sure this implementation is correct with all these nested view controllers. I'm not sure this is all possible with storyboard as well: for example a navigation controller for pushing to comment, user, or post views doesn't seem possible with storyboard.
I'd like to know the correct way of implementing this kind of UI design. And should / could this be implemented using Storyboards?
Your design team may layout the app using a "storyboard" (physical objects -- not the digital version). Large apps are hard to piece all the little things together on a storyboard. Just too many wires going every which way.
Look at the FB app without internet access and you can see their basic building blocks easier. Its built in units (post at a time) that are added to a scrolled view. Search bar and menus at the top and buttons at the bottom with the scrolled view in the middle. The posts probably have some common base class with various types derived from it (picture, video, links, etc).
There is some sort of background process monitoring the position of the scroll view to dynamically load new stories if you get down within 1/3 of the way to the bottom. Within each post you can see the components if you look closely and think about what sort of block that is.
I just came across a slide-in menu I really like: https://github.com/uzysjung/UzysSlideMenu
I would like to use this menu for an application that uses several view controllers (UIViewControllers and UINavigationControllers).
In Xcode, I created a single view application and made the view controller (MenuViewController) show the menu, like the creator did in his example project. I added more view controllers to the storyboard and connected them via segues to the MenuViewController. Upon selecting a menu item, these segues are triggered and the selected view is shown - so far so good.
But now, I run into the following problem:
All my view controllers are shown in full screen. That means that VCs that get segue'd in the viewport don't show the menu, because it's just not implemented there. I could put the menu in every VC, but that doesn't seem to be the right way to do it (even if I use some custom delegate method that every controller calls, like putMenuInViewController:(UIViewController *)target). I think I need something like a global singleton for the menu and make it appear in every view controller, but I have absolutely no idea on how to it or what to google for.
Any points into the right direction are greatly appreciated :)
I think you need to implement one root view controller with this menu as singleton, and add other view controller as child view controller to it.
I wrote a post about it, you can find it here:http://antrix1989.blogspot.com/2013/09/uiviewcontroller-as-singleton.html
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.
I'm at a point in the development of the app I'm working on where in order to complete the assignments given to me, it seems like the best way to accomplish what I need is to combine a UINavigationController with a UITabBarController.
Structurally, the app has a home page, and the rest of the app is navigated through the UITabBarController. This is a sound design for the original, but when I took over the development process of this, I had to make a lot of additions to the app, and there's technically supposed to be a "second" section which adds extra "features" if you will that aren't necessarily related to the main functionality of the app itself.
Basically, since everything begins at the Overview, the user is supposed to have a choice between just diving into the app itself, or using some of these extra features. I'm thinking the Navigation Controller would be fitting for the extra features, but I'm not sure how I can add to it.
What I need to know is - is this solution to the problem sound? If so, what's a good way to accomplish this? Is it ok to have a separate UIWindow class to link the Navigation Controller up with the TabBar Controller?
Granted, this app has used a lot of nib files, and every time I've tried to do something programmatically, it just hasn't worked. Thus, if someone could point out a NIB method of achieving this, I'd appreciate it.
According to Apple recommendation, UITabBarController should always be the root view controller of your app. So basically your main view is just one tab of your tab view controller, and so you just need to embed your main view controller in a navigation controller. This way you can navigate to whatever page you wish within that tab using the navigation controller, or you can go to other tabs using the tabbar controller.