Unable to create unwind segues when using custom view controller containment - cocoa-touch

Question

I'm attempting to convert our application to storyboards and have hit what I believe is a bug in the handling of unwind segues when dealing with custom container controllers. We have a view controller which displays another and uses the view controller containment api to do this, I wire up the segue in IB then select a custom class for the implementation. The perform method looks something like this:
-(void) perform {
UIViewController *container = [self sourceViewController];
UIViewController *child = [self destinationViewController];
[container addChildViewController:child];
[container.view addSubview:child.view];
child.view.center = container.view.center;
[UIView transitionWithView:container.view
duration:0.35
options:UIViewAnimationOptionCurveEaseInOut
animations:^{
child.view.alpha = 1;
} completion:^(BOOL finished) {
[child didMoveToParentViewController:container];
}];
}
That works perfectly, however I can't make it perform the unwind segue back to the container controller. I override viewControllerForUnwindSegueAction: fromViewController: withSender: and ensure that it's returning the correct value:
-(UIViewController *) viewControllerForUnwindSegueAction:(SEL)action fromViewController:(UIViewController *)fromViewController withSender:(id)sender {
id default = [super viewControllerForUnwindSegueAction:action fromViewController:fromViewController withSender:sender];
NSAssert1(default == self, #"Expected the default view controller to be self but was %#", default);
return default;
}
I can also confirm that canPerformUnwindSegueAction:fromViewController:withSender is being called and doing the right thing, but to be sure I overrode it to return YES
-(BOOL) canPerformUnwindSegueAction:(SEL)action fromViewController:(UIViewController *)fromViewController withSender:(id)sender {
return YES;
}
The next step I would expect to happen is for segueForUnwindingToViewController:fromViewController:identifier: to be called, however it never is. Instead the application crashes with an NSInternalInconsistencyException.
2012-10-01 10:56:33.627 UnwindSegues[12770:c07] *** Assertion failure in -[UIStoryboardUnwindSegueTemplate _perform:], /SourceCache/UIKit_Sim/UIKit-2372/UIStoryboardUnwindSegueTemplate.m:78
2012-10-01 10:56:33.628 UnwindSegues[12770:c07] *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'Could not find a view controller to execute unwinding for <USCustomContainerViewController: 0x75949a0>'
*** First throw call stack:
(0x1c8e012 0x10cbe7e 0x1c8de78 0xb61f35 0x581711 0x45ab54 0x10df705 0x16920 0x168b8 0xd7671 0xd7bcf 0xd6d38 0x4633f 0x46552 0x243aa 0x15cf8 0x1be9df9 0x1be9ad0 0x1c03bf5 0x1c03962 0x1c34bb6 0x1c33f44 0x1c33e1b 0x1be87e3 0x1be8668 0x1365c 0x1e7d 0x1da5)
libc++abi.dylib: terminate called throwing an exception
Has anyone successfully used unwind segues combined with the view controller containment APIs? Any idea what step I'm missing? I've uploaded a demo project to github which shows the issue in the simplest demonstration project I could come up with.

Answer 1

The problem in your example is that there's no there there. It's too simple. First, you create your container view controller in a rather odd way (you don't use the new IB "container view" which is there to help you do this). Second, you've got nothing to unwind: nothing was pushed or presented on top of anything.
I have a working example showing that canPerformUnwindSegueAction really is consulted up the parent chain, and that viewControllerForUnwindSegueAction and segueForUnwindingToViewController are called and effective, if present in the right place. See:
https://github.com/mattneub/Programming-iOS-Book-Examples/tree/master/ch19p640presentedViewControllerStoryboard2
I have now also created a fork of your original example on github, correcting it so that it illustrates these features:
https://github.com/mattneub/UnwindSegues
It isn't really a situation where "unwind" is needed, but it does show how "unwind" can be used when a custom container view controller is involved.

Answer 2

This seems to be a bug – I would also expect unwind segues to work as you implemented.
The workaround that I used is explicitly dismissing the presented view controller in the IBAction method:
- (UIStoryboardSegue *)segueForUnwindingToViewController:(UIViewController *)toViewController
fromViewController:(UIViewController *)fromViewController
identifier:(NSString *)identifier
{
return [[UIStoryboardSegue alloc] initWithIdentifier:identifier
source:fromViewController
destination:toViewController];
}
- (IBAction)unwind:(UIStoryboardSegue*)segue
{
UIViewController *vc = segue.sourceViewController;
[vc willMoveToParentViewController:nil];
if ([vc respondsToSelector:#selector(beginAppearanceTransition:animated:)]) {
[vc beginAppearanceTransition:NO animated:YES]; // iOS 6
}
UIView *modal = vc.view;
UIView *target = [[segue destinationViewController] view];
[UIView animateWithDuration:duration animations:^{
modal.frame = CGRectMake(0, target.bounds.size.height, modal.frame.size.width, modal.frame.size.height);
} completion:^(BOOL finished) {
[modal removeFromSuperview];
[vc removeFromParentViewController];
if ([vc respondsToSelector:#selector(endAppearanceTransition)]) {
[vc endAppearanceTransition];
}
}];
}

Answer 3

Brief history before the answer: I just ran into the same exact error message when trying to use multiple Container Views on one iPad screen in iOS 6 and calling unwind segues from code. At first I thought this may be a problem because my segue was created using Storyboards by CTRL-dragging from File Owner to Exit instead of from some UI control to Exit, but I got same results when I put test Close buttons on each VC and had them trigger the unwind segues. I realized that I'm trying to unwind an embed segue, not a modal/push/popup segue, so it makes sense that it fails to do it. After all, if the unwind segue succeeds and the view controller is unloaded from a Container View, iOS 6 thinks there'll just be an empty space on the screen in that spot. (In my case, I have another container view taking up screen real estate that's shown behind the container view which I'm trying to unload, but iOS doesn't know that since the two aren't connected in any way.)
Answer: this led me to realize that you can only unwind modal, push, or popover segues, be it within the main window or as part of a Navigation/Tab Controller. This is b/c iOS then knows that there was a previous VC responsible for the whole screen and it's safe to go back to it. So, in your case, I'd look into a way to tell iOS that your child container view is connected to your parent container view in a way that makes it safe to dismiss the child container view. For example, perform a modal/push/popover segue when displaying the child container view, or wrap both into a custom UINavigationController class (I assume you don't want the navigation bar, that's why custom class).
Sorry I can't give exact code, but this is the best I got to so far and I hope it's helpful.

Answer 4

Looks like this bug is fixed in iOS9.