Just a newbie with iPhone development.. I just have a small problem but huge confusion with regards to NIB files. In Cocoa, how can we change the File's owner and First responder of a nib? And BTW, when can we actually say that we need more than one NIB file for a project in the first place?
Change the class of File's owner in Interface builder (select File's owner and open Identity inspector). You don't need to change anything in First responder.
As to your second question - you can build an entire project programmatically without nibs. I build mine with nibs for every view, controller, custom control etc.
Open the nib, click on "File's Owner"
Select the third inspection tool, "Identity Inspector" (?)
Type in the class this nib needs to be associated with.
Related
Alright, I will try and make this short and sweet. I recently created my first iOS app, and in my app I decided to go the storyboard route by selecting the checkbox when creating the project. On a side note, I recently just started developing in Xcode, keep that in mind. So I started by designing the GUI elements of my app, and before I knew it, I had 8 scenes in my storyboard file and one view controller. Needless to say the view controller has been populated with code from different scenes thus making it difficult to understand what does what in the view controller. In the spirit OO design principles, I thought it would be a good idea to create a separate view controller for each scene. So I created some class files for the project. When I try to associate the newly created class file with the scene my computer just sounds a beep / donk sound. I am trying to associate the newly created class file to a scene by selecting the scene in the storyboard / Interface Builder view, then displaying the Utilities pane on the right, then selecting the Identity Inspector at the top of the Utilities pane, then setting the Custom Class to my newly created class file, but when I type the name of the class and press enter I just hear a beep.
If any one has any insight or knows of a tutorial explaining this process please post. Part of the reason I am trying to do this is for code readability, better code management, and a better code structure for the application. I came across this stack thread explaining some of what I am talking about.
Also here's a picture of what my project looks like if that helps shed any light.
You need to consider the parent class of your controllers, UIViewController for example.
To do so, you must check the .h file and your xib/nib file.
I. In your .h file, you will be seing:
#interface ViewControllerWelcome : NSObject
Change 'NSObject' to 'UIViewController' - this will mean that ViewControllerWelcome has a parent class UIViewController.
II. In your nib/xib file:
1. Click on the controller that you are going to set from the storyboard.
2. Go to interface builder and click the "Identity Inspector" (third item from the left) from the Utilities panel.
3. You need to specifically set each controller's name (eg. ViewControllerWelcome)
Do these to all controllers from your storyboard.
Here's something you can read about ViewControllers and Storyboards.
I am currently reading 'Beginning iOS 5 Games Development: Using the iOS SDK for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch' by Lucas Jordan. In this book, there is a section in where you are instructed to make a 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' game using a variety of UIViewControllers. My problem is that I cannot create an IBOutlet from the ViewController_iphone.xib (which, as the name suggests, is made for the iPhone) to the ViewController.h file that comes with every new project.
In ViewController_iPhone.xib I have created a UIView and set the file's owner of the .xib to ViewController_iPhone.xib. When i ctrl+click and try to link the view to ViewController.h, it simply does not give me the option to do so. When I change the file's owner to ViewController, it is not a problem to create IBOutlets in ViewController.h, however that is not the correct file's owner that will allow the program to work correctly.
I have downloaded the source code for the book, and the author of the book seemed to have no problems whatsoever creating the oultlets. I have compared my project to his and I can't seem to find what is wrong.
If anybody could help me, I would be very grateful.
Thanks!
Fitzy
You should set the file owner to the name of the associated UIViewController which is ViewController in your case.
In general, if you set the file owner to XViewController, then you can only link IBoutlets to that view controller.
The MVC model, Model-View-Controller model, isn't intended to have an action in one view touch the controller of another view. In InterfaceBuilder, you should only ever be able to attach actions to the controller for that specific view.
What you may want is some way to relay information from one view controller to another -- I tend to use delegates for that, but without knowing more about what you're doing, I don't know if that's the correct answer.
The issue i am facing deals with multiple views, each needing to communicate with one another. I chose to use the File Owner for this, but can't seem to be able to access the already loaded instance of it from inside of views.
Each rectangle represents its own view
Activity will happen on "Some View", where user's event will cause Labels in top view to be updated
Event will not be triggers by a button click of anything like that. No outputs are set up to establish relationships between the views
No outlets are set up between the views
Outlets are setup however between top Views (with Labels) and File Owner (UIViewController).
Ultimately, i'd like to update label in view 1 from view 2.
Then the bar moves, I want labels to change
At this time, i believe a reasonable solution would be to ask the File Owner to make a change for Labels. From the "Some View", i'd like to call the File Owner and make a request.
From the stand point of the any view residing as part of the nib, how can i know who the "File Owner" of this nib is?
In the Interface Builder, File Owner maintains the IBOutlet to UILabels of the view.
You need to define a delegate (or whatever you like to call it) outlet in your Puzzle1 class and link this to File's owner in the nib. This will give you a pointer to the instance of the view controller that currently owns your view. If you set the type of the delegate to your viewcontroller subclass, then its methods and properties will be available to you from within the view.
This sounds potentially horrendously messy and is probably better solved by using NSNotifications.
But anyways, did you know there's a UINib class? Perhaps you could subclass that and keep track of the owners (which get passed in it's instantiateWithOwner: options: method) as things are loaded.
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UIKit/Reference/UINib_Ref/Reference/Reference.html
I have a nib file I want to open up, but it is just an info panel so I dont need any methods for it. Is there a way I can just open it. I am not in a class that is a subclass of NSWindowController.
Yes, you can make any object the owner of a xib. That object, however, has to "host" the outlets used in your xib.
For example, if you have a "ConfirmationSheet.xib", just declare your outlets in the class you want to "own" that instance of the xib, set the File's Owner class to your class, then connect your outlets. Let's use an outlet named "confirmHowMuchSlider" as an example: when the xib is loaded, your class's "confirmHowMuchSlider" outlet will be connected to the slider you connected in the xib and that's that.
Note this generally a sign of not-so-good design, IMO. If it's complicated enough to be in its own xib, it should have its own controller. If it's not complicated (just a sheet), you can sacrifice another 0.001 seconds of app or document load time and put it in a more central xib. :-)
Remember, if you are doing this for performance reasons, a separate round of disk access just to load a single sheet with a few buttons is generally worse in performance than loading more stuff in one go from one xib. All things are a tradeoff.
Look at NSBundle Additions Reference.
I have basic *.xib file, which have NSView.
How can I use another nib files for this Custom View? What is NSViewController and how should I use it?
Generally, you create a new nib, selecting "View" as the nib template. Then you select the File's Owner and set its class to NSViewController (or your own subclass of it, in which case you may have to add the nib to your Xcode project first) in the last tab of the Inspector. Then you connect the view controller's "view" outlet to the view.
You should read Apple's docs on NSViewController, it's actually a very simple class. However, before you start drawing and coding I would suggest you should carefully structure your app in MVC terms. If you make a mistake in the design phase, you will have to redo a lot of your work later. Using view controllers is not always justified, it depends on the complexity of the app.
NSViewController as its name suggests is a Controller class, means it connects the View to the Model, in a perfect MVC environment.
Each ViewController is bound to one View, you can build that view in code or using the Interface Builder.
For more help, I would suggest to watch Stanford University iPhone programming course, it's available on Stanford iTunes (iTunes link), iPhone SDK share the same underground with the OSX SDK so it's exactly the same for ViewControllers.