is it good practice to use lots of IBOutlets? - ios

I'm still quite the beginner at iOS and so I've been doing lots of tutorials, lately.
Let's say I was making an app such as a calculator, with let's say 24 buttons. I've seen example code where the button's label gets used to figure out what button it is, but that seems really kludgey, especially when trying to translate the app.
So is it better to just bite the bullet and have one IBOutlet for each and every button instead? why or why not?
If not, what would be the most elegant way to go about doing this, while staying in the MVC paradigm?
Ok I just was looking back at my code and now i feel more like a noob than before... I really was talking about IBActions, not so much IBOutlets... Should I have a whole bunch of IBActions for the different buttons? here's what it looks like right now in the viewController.h file:
- (IBAction)digitPressed:(UIButton *)sender;
- (IBAction)operationPressed:(UIButton *)sender;
- (IBAction)dotPressed:(UIButton *)sender;
- (IBAction)button_mClear_Pressed:(UIButton *) sender;
- (IBAction)button_mPlus_Pressed:(UIButton *) sender;
- (IBAction)button_mMinus_Pressed:(UIButton *) sender;
- (IBAction)button_mRecall_Pressed:(UIButton *) sender;
- (IBAction)button_AC_Pressed:(UIButton *) sender;
- (IBAction)button_PlusMinus_Pressed:(UIButton *) sender;
why does that just feel repetitive and inelegant to me?

Typically, you'd have similar buttons all trigger the same action, the idea being that similar button actions should have some common code between them. You then use the tag property to identify which button was clicked. E.g., number buttons trigger a specific action, operator buttons trigger another action, and so on.
- (void)didClickOperatorButton:(id)button
{
switch ([button tag])
{
case kAdditionOperation:
// Do the addition operation ...
// etc..
You can set the tag property on any control in Interface Builder.

If you use IBOutlets and wire them up in Interface Builder/Xcode 4 is more a matter of taste, than a programming decision. And doing so or not does not necessarily affect the mvc paradigm.
It is your choice, if you keep 24 IBOutlets in your viewcontroller and load the buttons from a nib, as it is maybe easier to arrage them in your interface, or to have an array full of buttons, and add them to your view programmatically and set them up with the right actions.
You can also have the buttons in different nibs for different viewcontroller — lets say for the number pad, the simple commands and the higher commands and functions. each of the viewcontrollers would have a delegate of a certain protocol, which all would be implemented by on 'BrainController'.This setup might be a bit overkill for a simple calculator, but would allow you to use nibs, without a viewcontoller overcrowded with IBOutlets. And you could re-use oarts of it in other project, i.e. the numberpad in an app with a remote control interface.

If you use XIB's and a lot of objects, then yes. If you plan on making the object do something special like disable the button during some method call later in code, then YES, hook up an IBOutlet. If you are only connecting the buttons to IBActions, then NO, just connect any button (without IBOutlet) to your IBAction, this will save you on connecting a bunch of objects.

Related

Check which UIViewController my custom button class is on w/o Storyboard

I have created a custom class for my UIBarButtonItem (refreshIndicator.m). This button will be on many different view controllers, all push-segued from my MainViewController/NavigationController.
Instead of dragging an outlet onto every single ViewController.m file for iPhone storyboard THEN iPad storyboard (ugh, still targeting iOS7), I want to know if there is a way to complete my task simply within my UIBarButtonItem custom class. I've looked around everywhere but I haven't quite found an answer to this,
All I need to do is check which UIViewController is present, check the last time the page was refreshed, and then based on that time, set an image for the UIBarButtonItem. (I've got this part figured out though, unless someone has a better suggestion). How can I check for the current UIViewController within a custom button class? Is this possible?
Does it need to know which view controller its on so it can tell that vc it was pressed? If that's the case, then use your button's inherited target and action properties. On every vc that contains an instance of the button, in view did load:
self.myRefreshIndicator.target = self;
self.myRefreshIndicator.action = #selector(myRefreshIndicatorTapped:);
- (void)myRefreshIndicatorTapped:(id)sender {
// do whatever
}
More generally, its better to have knowledge about the model flow to the views from the vc, and knowledge of user actions flow from the views. Under that principal, your custom button could have a method like:
- (void)timeIntervalSinceLastRefresh:(NSTimeInterval)seconds {
// change how I look based on how many seconds are passed
}
And your vcs:
NSTimeInterval interval = [[NSDate date] timeIntervalSinceDate:self.lastRefreshDate];
[self.myRefreshIndicator timeIntervalSinceLastRefresh:interval];
If you really must go from a subview to a view controller, you could follow the responder chain as suggested in a few of the answers here (but I would go to great lengths to avoid this sort of thing).
It is possible to achieve this, but the solution is everything but elegant. It is one way of getting around the basic principles of iOS and is strongly discouraged.
One of the ways is to walk through the responder chain, posted by Phil M.
Another way is to look through all subviews of view controllers until you find the button.
Both ways are considered a bad practice and should be avoided.
For your particular case, I would rethink the structure of having a separate instance of the bar button. For example, you could rework it into a single UIButton instance that gets displayed over every view controller and it can also act as a singleton.

What's the difference with :(id)sender?

What's the difference between declaring a UIButton in Xcode like this:
- (IBAction)testButton;
and declaring a button like this:
- (IBAction)testButton:(id)sender;
I understand that in the .m file you would then implement the buttons accordingly, as shown below:
- (IBAction)testButton
{
// insert code here..
}
and setting it up like this:
- (IBAction)testButton:(id)sender
{
// insert code here..
}
Is there any additional things you can do by declaring the button with :(id)sender, is there some additional stability, or is there no difference?
With :(id)sender you are able to access the button itself through the sender variable. This is handy in many situations. For example, you can have many buttons and give each a tag. Then use the [sender tag] method to find which button was tapped if many buttons are using this IBAction.
- (IBAction)someMethod:(id)sender {
// do stuff
}
Using (id)sender, you have a reference to who sent the method call. Please note, this doesn't have to be limited to a UIButton.
If you're created this method via control-dragging from the storyboard an only hooking up a single button, then sender is basically useless (it will always be the same), and should probably be marked as unused:
#pragma unused (sender)
(The compiler can better optimize your code if you do this.)
However, there's nothing wrong with hooking up several UI elements to the same IBAction method. You can then distinguish the sender via:
[sender tag]
...which returns an int that was either set via the storyboard or programmatically.
Moreover, you can call this method elsewhere in your class. You can either pass nil as the sender, or you can pass it a particular UI element in order to force it into the results you've coded for objects of that tag.
Nonetheless, if you plan to call the method with a nil argument, you can always throw:
if(!sender)
... into the method in order to handle special logic for when the method has been invoked programmatically as opposed to via user interaction.
It allows you to know which button you are working with. I have posted a simple example for a card game below
- (IBAction)flipCard:(id)sender {
[self.game flipCardAtIndex:[self.cardButtons indexOfObject:sender]];
self.flipCount++;
[self updateUI];
}
This method is used for a card flipping game. There are multiple buttons on the screen representing different cards. When you hit the button, a card in the model must be flipped. We know which one by finding the index of the variable sender

Subclassing vs Category with Interface Builder

I have read multiple times that we should not subclass a component (a UIButton for example) :
Why shouldn't I subclass a UIButton?
Subclassing a UIButton
The problem is when I use Interface Builder.
For example, I have a button with a precise appearance in a lot of my views. I can set them each time with IB (it's painful), or I can use a custom class to factorize the custom behavior and appearance.
It seems a bit contradictory to me that the only way to simplify the process with IB is to do it the way that everybody recommends against.
Is there a better solution ? Can I use a category with IB ?
Thanks.
You might be able to use the UIView appearance proxy. I don't know what all you're doing to your buttons but this might help:
Put this is your AppDelegate file in the application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method
if([UIButton conformsToProtocol:#protocol(UIAppearanceContainer)]){
[[UIButton appearance] setBackgroundImage:[UIImage imageNamed:#"YourImage"] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
//modify any other UIButton properties you want to set globally
}
The second link you provided was pretty clear, and this is pretty much what apple itself states, subclass, but never mess with the internal structure.
Best example is iOS 7, now things are completely different and, for example, an application I'm maintaining had a subclassed UIControl, and now it has trouble running on the new iOS, simply because, it was built with assumptions on how the internal structure works (iterating the internal subviews replacing some things). You might not get your app rejected, but it will be a pain in the a** to maintain.
As a rule of thumb, anything you can do to an UIButton from the outside, something like this:
[myButton setBackgroundImage:... forState:...];
[myButton setTextColor:... forState:...];
myButton.titleLabel.font = ...
You can move it to the inside of a custom subclass method:
+ (UIButton*)fancyPantsButton
{
UIButton *button = [UIButton butonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];
[myButton setBackgroundImage:... forState:...];
[myButton setTextColor:... forState:...];
myButton.titleLabel.font = ...
return button;
}
You can also do this on init or awakeFromNib without problems (and I usually prefer the later).
UIAppearence is also an option, as was suggested by user hw731. Whatever floats your boat, really.
As for the second question, nib files pretty much create instance a class and then fill-in the things it stores using setValue:forKey: when loading (that's why you get an error like "class is not key-value compliant for something" when you screw up a nib), so if something is categorised when the nib is being loaded, then yes, nibs respect categories, as its simply using initWithCoder.. and then filling in the gaps.
And, by the same token, the nib file won't be able to fill-in custom properties, since it doesn't know about them, unless you explicitly add them on the "User Defined Runtime Attributes" in IB (iOS 5 onwards).
Another technique for nibs, is using
#property (strong) IBOutletCollection(UIButton) NSArray *buttons;
And then iterating and customising buttons accordingly (be it via a subclass, category, local method, ...). This method is really helpful if you want just a handful of custom buttons, but not enough to warrant using a subclass.
I don't see any reason that you shouldn't subclass UIButton, especially for your purpose of making configuration with IB easier. Neither of the links you provided explain why you shouldn't subclass, so their assertions don't seem reliable. On the other hand, the presence of UIButtonTypeCustom in UIButton.h gives the impression that the framework authors planned for UIButton subclasses.

iOS: handling of UIGestureRecognisers in UI(Sub)Views

I would like to know how to best possible address the following issue:
I have a single ViewController. Its view contains a great number of complex subviews (subclass of UIView). Due to the complexity some of these UIViews initialise their own UIGestureRecognisers and implement the according target actions. As I want to coordinate the gestures of various subviews I have to set the single once ViewController as the gesture's delegate.
There are various possibilities for that.
1) Initialize ALL gestures in the the viewController (this will lead to a massive viewController)
2) defining a protocol in the UIVIews (getViewController), implemented by the ViewController
#protocol CustomViewDelegate <NSObject>
#required
- (UIViewController *)getViewController;
#end
3) customise the init method of the UIViews and using the ViewController as an option.
- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame andViewController:(UIViewController *)vc;
What is the most elegant possibility to solve this issue? Is it OK to implement target actions inside a UIView object?
Thanks for your thoughts...
If you're defining custom UIView subclasses, you can invest them with as much logic as it makes sense to store local to them, give them delegate protocols to pass anything else up and, as long as you expose the delegate as an IBOutlet, you can wire up your view controller as the relevant delegate directly in Interface Builder or the UI designer part of Xcode 4. I personally think that would be the most natural way forward, since it consolidates any view-specific logic directly in the view and lets you do the wiring up where you would normally do the wiring up.
In terms of overall design, such a scheme conforms to model-view-controller provided your views are doing only view-related logic. So, for example, if you had a custom rectangular view that can take a swipe anywhere on it to reposition a pin, and the 2d position of the pin affects some other system setting, you'd be correct to catch the gesture in the view, reposition the pin and then send updates on its position down to the delegate, which would fulfil the role of controller and push the value to any other views that are affected and out to the model.
Commenting on your suggested solutions directly:
(1) this would focus all logic into the one controller; whether it's correct from a design point-of-view depends on the extent to which you're having to interrogate your custom views (in that you don't want to end up treating them as mostly data that external actors have to know how to manipulate) and the extent to which you want to reuse logic.
(2) I'm not sure I entirely understand the suggestion — what is getViewController defined on and how does it know how to respond? If it's the UIViews themselves and the view controller has to identify itself first then I'd suggest just adopting the delegate pattern wholesale rather than specialising to views and view controllers, e.g. as you may want to build compound views that tie together logic from several subviews.
(3) as a rule of thumb, the sort of things to pass to init are those that the class actually needs to know to be able to initialise; it would probably be better to use a normal property to set the controller after the fact. Or make it an IBOutlet and wire it up so that it happens automatically via the NIB.

How to record all of the user's touches in iPhone app

note: This is an expansion (and clarification) of a question I asked yesterday.
I am conducting a research project where I want to record all of the user's touches in the iPhone app. After the experiment, I will be able to download the data and process it in either Excel or (more likely) Matlab and determine how many times they clicked on certain buttons, when they clicked certain buttons, etc. To do this, I would need to know:
a) When they touched
b) Where they touched
c) Which view they touched
The first two are easy, but the third I am having trouble with. I know I can do this to get the reference to the UIView that was touched:
CGPoint locationPoint = [[touches anyObject] locationInView:self];
UIView* viewYouWishToObtain = [self hitTest:locationPoint withEvent:event];
However, that will just give me a pointer to the view, not the name of the view that was touched. I could assign each view a tag, but then every time I create a new view I would need to remember to tag it (or, alternatively, log the address of each view when initialized and log it when the view is touched). Subclassing UIView and adding an automatic tag isn't really an option since I'm creating other UIButtons and UISliders and would need to subclass those also, which doesn't seem like a very good solution.
Does anyone know of a clean, easy way to do this?
For "Which view they touched", what information do you need?
Perhaps you could use a category to add a method to UIView. This method would generate a string containing information about the view. Such as:
its type e.g. UIButton etc.
its size and position
the title of the view, if it has one (e.g. the button title)
the parent view type and title
other stuff e.g. is the view enabled, what state it is in. anything you like.
For example: "Type:UIButton Title:"Back" Rect:{3,5,40,25}" or some such string.
This is very clean and gives you quite a lot of information to be going with.
You could add a category to UIView which would then be inherited by all UIView descended objects, although I'm not sure its any more efficient than tagging. Since a category can override methods then you could override init methods for automatic tagging I suppose.
http://macdevelopertips.com/objective-c/objective-c-categories.html
I'm not sure what you mean by the "name" of the view. If you mean the view name in Interface Builder, I don't believe it includes that in the instantiated objects. You could use the Tag attribute which is included, but that's just a number and not a name.

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