UIViewController within a UIViewController - objective-c

So I have a viewControllerA, and I want to add another View managed by viewControllerB to it. There is only one UISlider activating a simple action in viewControllerB. It won't crash if I don't touch this UISlider, it will once I use UISlider. I am using ARC. I am using:
[self.view addSubView: viewControllerB.view];
to add viewControllerB to viewControllerA. Am I missing something? Thanks.
OK. It looks like a really simple situation. I just added one view controller and one action. Here is the demo project code on github: https://github.com/randomor/Demo
The reason why I want this to work is because I have another app that will create a view controller on the spot and add it to anther view. And I don't want to do it modally, because I don't want the new view controller to cover the whole screen. Thanks.
SOLUTION: So I'm now just using the latest ViewController containment API:
[self addChildViewController:viewControllerB];
It works! as long as I added this line, the event will be passed to its own controller and it stopped crashing.

i recommend you, to use the following code
in ViewControllerA.h
#import "ViewControllerB.h"
in ViewControllerA.m (where you want to push the new controller)
ViewControllerB *newController = [[ViewControllerB alloc]init];
[self presentModalViewController:newController animated:YES];
in ViewControllerB.m you will need
[self.presentingViewController dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
to make it vanish again.
concerning multiple controllers for one open screen (Apple ViewController Programming Guide):
Each custom view controller object you create is responsible for managing exactly
one screen’s worth of content. The one-to-one correspondence between a view controller
and a screen is a very important consideration in the design of your application.
You should not use multiple custom view controllers to manage different portions
of the same screen. Similarly, you should not use a single custom view controller
object to manage multiple screens worth of content.

You should try and avoid the practice of nesting UIViewControllers. While it is technically supported in iOS5, it is ill-advised, for many reasons, including the type of problem that you're having (you have a dangling pointer to a UIViewController, which is why you are crashing).
http://blog.carbonfive.com/2011/03/09/abusing-uiviewcontrollers/

Although this question is extremely vague, I imagine that you are not keeping a reference to View Controller B, and so when view B tries to interact with it, it causes EXC_BAD_ACCESS.

What's the object that is set as the target for the slider? If it's a EXC_BAD_ADDRESS, then you may not be retaining the target, most probably the view controller for the slider.

Related

Does dismissViewControllerAnimated remove the controller's instance

For my app, I want to have a few different instances of the same view controller. For now, I am just creating a new instance like this:
iSafeViewController *tab = [[iSafeViewController alloc] init];
[tab setModalPresentationStyle:UIModalPresentationFullScreen];
[tab setModalTransitionStyle:UIModalTransitionStyleCrossDissolve];
[self presentViewController:tab animated:YES completion:nil];
Great. And since this is done in the iSafeViewController class anyway, I have another button that currently just dismisses the latest controller on the stack.
- (IBAction)closeTab:(id)sender {
[self dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:nil];
}
Okay, however, I really want to be able to go back to these instances. So, I have two questions.
Does dismissViewControllerAnimated remove that controller's instance from memory. If not, is there a way I can re-present it.
There is probably a better way to navigate through viewController instances then presentViewControllerAnimated. At the very least, is there a better way to create new instances of one's viewController and be able to navigate to each of them, hopefully not in a stack. In other words, if there are three viewController instances, is there a way I can go from the third to the main one?
Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.
"Does dismissViewControllerAnimated remove that controller's instance from memory? If not, is there a way I can re-present it."
Calling dismissViewControllerAnimated does not explicitly remove a view controller from memory, but if no other part of the code is storing a strong reference to the view controller, once the presenting view controller dismisses your VC, it may be deallocated as per the normal memory management system.
So if you ensure something in your code has a reference to your view controller (aside from the VC which is presenting it modally), it won't disappear after being dismissed, and yes this means you can re-use it.
As for "random access" to view controllers: you could use UINavigationController and use methods like popToViewController:animated: and multiple calls to pushViewController:animated: (without animation!) to create the effect of travelling to arbitrary view controllers. This feels like a bit of a hack.
Alternatively, and preferably, you could write your own custom container view controller. This is a view controller that deals with presenting other view controllers. See Apple docs.
Here's a good WWDC video on the subject: Implementing UIViewController Containment
Further reading:
Container View Controller Examples
http://subjective-objective-c.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/writing-high-quality-view-controller.html
Custom container view controller

How to Refer to the Current View Controller in the Code

I'm a new iOS developer with a simple question: I want to programmatically move from one view controller to the next, how do I write this code?
So far I have:
UINavigationController *navigationController;
navigationController = [[UINavigationController alloc] init];
[self.view addSubview:navigationController.view];
[navigationController pushViewController:viewController animated:NO];
I'm not even sure if this will work, ultimately, but my main question is "viewController" in line 4. The program doesn't know what that is. It is the name of my current view controller, but how do I set it up so that it knows what I mean by viewController?
As an aside, the above is part of an if/else statement that occurs and is connected to the NSUserDefaults class to make it such that the view controller I am referring to only loads if terms and conditions have not previously been accepted. Will that work? Thanks.
First the simple answer: pass self when you want to pass the "current" object.
The more important consideration is: is that nav controller on screen? It's likely that your code won't do much unless you use a navigation controller which is (probably) the window's root view controller.
This is fairly easy to setup in your storyboard ("embed in"->"navigation controller") and then you don't need to instantiate it in code, you simply use self.navigationController (usually).
Normally, you would instantiate viewController just before you push it, so the program will know what it is. And, sure, you can have an if statement, and push this new view controller based on how the if statement evaluates.
I'm not sure about the code you wrote -- whether that's right depends on the structure of your app, and where you're doing this. Often, the navigation controller is made the root view controller of the window, and you set the navigation controller with a root view controller of its own when you create it

Reuse UIViewController instances when using storyboard

I decided to give the use of storyboards a go in my current iPhone app. I am facing a bit of a problem. I really need to reuse my UIViewController instances.
What do I mean by that? Well, for example I have a table view controller. When I tap a cell, another view controller is loaded from the storyboard and pushed onto the navigation controller stack. This all works well, but it takes about half a second to a second each time this view controller is loaded. Before I was using story boards I simply solved this problem by caching the created instance so the second time you tap a cell the view controller can be immediately shown.
By caching the created instance I mean something like this:
if (!cachedInstance) {
cachedInstance = [MyViewController new];
}
[self.navigationController pushViewController:cachedInstance];
Does anyone know how to accomplish this using the storyboard? Thanks in advance.
If you are using segues, you will need to create custom segues in order to use a cached view controller like you did before. Otherwise, the typical "push" segue will create a new instance of the view controller for segue.destinationViewController. If you write a custom UIStoryboardSegue class and use custom segues you can override initWithIdentifier:source:destination: and put your cached view controller in for the destinationViewController, and then override perform to use the classic pushViewController call.
That is how you handle the segue if you are really intent on using them. I would just skip it though, unless you really want the fancy arrows to lay everything out on your storyboard. If you skip it you can just instantiate the view controllers into the cache and then push them on just like you did before.
If your question is more about locating a view controller inside a storyboard then you can use:
UIViewController *vc = [[UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:#"MainStoryboard" bundle:nil] instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:#"Some View Controller"];
Then you can save that to your cache and push it like you did in your example code.
Hope that helps.

Get Tab Selection Event from UITabBar in a ViewController

The structure of my MainStoryboard is:
->Tab Bar Controller -> Navigation Controller -> View Controller (Search)
The behaviour I want to have is that when the user re-selects the Search tab, the UIScrollView on it scrolls to the top. I am unsure how to get the event from the TabBarController, however.
I've been looking at a lot of stuff about UITabBarDelegate, particularly:
- (void)tabBar:(UITabBar *)tabBar didSelectItem:(UITabBarItem *)item
I have, not quite managed to get this to work properly though. I am very unsure about how to go about setting the delegate (assuming that is the way it's done). I've tried hooking it up in IB, but it wouldn't let me. I also tried to get the UITabBar from the AppDelegate (after looking at some seemingly-related answers).
Any pointers will be greatly appreciated (unless they're null).
UITabBar *aTabBar = [UITabBarItem alloc] init];
....Any other modifications you want to make to aTabBar....
[aTabBar setDelegate:self]
Don't forget to add "<UITabBarDelegate>" to the "#interface" part of whatever object you're trying to designate as the delegate.
For my own code, I usually use some object that isn't the application delegate (as the app delegate is usually meant for application level events like "application is suspending" or "application is coming back into foreground"). If you add "<UITabBarDelegate>" to your Search view controller, make sure that whatever you do with the "didSelectItem" method is applicable only to the Search view controller. Otherwise instantiate some different object if you want to do actions on various view controllers based on which tab bar item is being displayed.

How to replace self (UIView) with another UIView?

View A has a button upon clicking it, we go to view B
View B does not retain a pointer to view A.
From view B, i'd like to load view A back (programmatically)
Effectively, i'd like to kill B and replace it with A.
I was thinking that the following should work but, it does not
Calling from View B
ViewController *main = [ViewController new];
[self addSubview:[main view]];
What am i missing please?
Personally I think the easiest way to do this would be by having a UIViewController with an IBOutlet to both UIView objects. You can add and design them both in the interface builder and just set one of them (view B) as hidden (it's a property in UIView).
Then, you could specify a button action to toggle the visibility of view B.
I must add though that there are constructs for implementing screen flows, such as the NavigationController. In your case, however, you might also consider the use of the presentModalViewController:animated: method.
It all depends really, but in general it's better practice to make a seperate UIViewController for each UIView in your application.
Hope this helps!
This sounds to me like you're looking for a navigation controller. You can easily take away a navigation controllers NavBar and take away the animations if you don't want them - but this would achieve exactly what you're looking for.