iOS 5 storyboard, programmatically determine path - objective-c

I'm having trouble to achieve the following using a storyboard:
When setup is not done:
run app -> show settings view controller -> show main navigation controller
When setup is done:
run app -> show main navigation controller
So basically, I want the app to programmatically start with the settings view in certain cases, and otherwise skip right ahead to the main navigation controller.
I did manage to show the settings view with a modal style segue from the main navigation controller, but I don't know how to display it before the main navigation controller is displayed. Any ideas?

By default, the initial view controller from your main storyboard is instantiated and displayed automatically when your app starts up. To prevent this happening you need to remove the UIMainStoryboardFile setting from your info.plist file.
With no default view controller, you are now free to create one programmatically at app startup. See the UIStoryboard documentation. Use +storyboardWithName:bundle: to load the storyboard and then use –instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier: to create the correct view controller. You will also need to create a main UIWindow and add the view controller's view to it just like you used to do with .nib based UI. Note that without the UIMainStoryboardFile setting a main window is not created for you - read the explanation.

I managed to do it a bit different:
Use a UINavigationController as the initial view controller.
Create a root view controller that will manage the decision of what to load.
Create a Storyboard Segues from the root view controller to the main view and to settings view, and give the segues proper identifiers.
Call the performSegueWithIdentifier with the proper identifier from your root view controller.
Just another solution, hope this helps.

I did something similar to amoshaviv, his advice is sound. I did it slightly different though, and I'll give some more info.
I created a custom MyInitialViewController class, derived from UIViewController, and made this the initial view controller.
In the storyboard file, I created modal segues with appropriate names to all (in my case three) possible 'real' first view controllers.
In the MyInitialViewController class, I implemented the
- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated;
method, to first perform the check which view to switch to, and then do the correct
[self performSegueWithIdentifier:#"NameOfSegue" sender:self];
Effectively, this makes the MyInitialViewController nothing more than a switch performed when it's brought into view. I first tried doing this when loaded because I don't care for actually seeing this view, but that did not work, while viewDidAppear does.
To make this visually smooth, I tried the following. In the properties of the segues, I disabled animation. The view I left empty, and I gave it a background color matching to that of the startup image.

Related

UINavBarController connecting the same UIViewController to multiple navigation controllers

I have a storyboarded app with a chain of tableviews followed by a detail view. Kind of the classic iPhone app. There are 4 tabs and each one leads to a navigation controller.
The issue is I really want to avoid unnecessary glue code since the app is basically finished. If it was possible to connect the Search and Favorites (bottom two off the tab bar) controller as 'Root View Controllers' to the same UIViewController I would be done. However, this won't work since a view controller can only be the root view controller to one tab. So as you can see I've instituted two dummy UIViewControllers that forward you to the UIViewController in the middle. Now, unfortunately, I have to write code to make that central view controller a fake root view controller to disable the appearance of the back button, and prevent popping to the blank root when you double-tap the tab bar.
Has anyone got a more elegant solution?
This appears to be a flaw in Storyboards. One workaround would be to use simple view controllers for each navigation controller's rootViewController. Put a UIContainerView in each that points to the UIViewController you want to share.

Storyboard with NavigationController and TabController

It seems like this should be easy to figure out, but I haven't had any luck this afternoon. I threw together this quick, simplified storyboard mockup of my problem.
Basically, I would like the table view controllers below to also be in a tab bar controller (in addition to the already present navigation controller). The tabs would switch between the two table view controllers.
Right now, the view controller with the buttons acts as a sort of menu. Each button leads to one of the table view controllers. Ideally this view controller would not have the tab bar visible, and would only be reachable from back buttons on the nav bars of the table view controllers.
I've tried a few different ways of embedding into a tabbarcontrollers but none of them produce the desired result:
-I've tried selecting both table view controllers and embedding those in a tab view controller. The tabbar doesnt show up in simulator, and the 'unreachable scene' warning appears.
-I've tried embedding the initial nav controller into a tabbarcontroller. This creates a tab entry for the first 'menu' page. It also causes issues with push segues once I connect the tableviews to the tabview.
I would be fine implementing some programmatic options on top of the storyboard, I just chose storyboarding for this project since it's a relatively simple presentation of data.
What is the proper way of going about this? Thanks!
A tab bar controller needs to be the root view controller of your view hierarchy. It goes against the HIG and Apple's standards to put a tab bar controller inside of any other type of container controller.
From the Apple docs:
When deploying a tab bar interface, you must install this view as the
root of your window. Unlike other view controllers, a tab bar
interface should never be installed as a child of another view
controller.
So, the bottom line here is you need to rethink your design. One option would be to set the UITabBarController as the root view of your window, and then have each of your UITableViewControllers inside of a UINavigationController, which is placed inside of the UITabBarController. In this way, you still get the navigation bar, and stay within Apple's design guidelines (you also won't get those pesky warnings, and Apple may even be throwing an exception nowadays if you try to install a UITabBarController as anything other than the root view of the window).
I accept JMStone answer but we might get into situation where we need to put tab bar controller inside other controller especially table view controller.
Please refer Storyboard navigation controller and tab bar controller
and also the good example by Matthjin: http://cl.ly/VQLa
Hopes it help some one who want to put tab bar controller inside table view controller and wants proper navigation.

addSubview: re-writes the navigation stack?

I'm working on a app which uses the controller containment pattern as described in the View Controller documentation in the iOS SDK.
I've written the controller container, and it works great. My controller is basically containing two sub views and it displays them both at the same time, sliding one over the other depending on what the user is doing. Works wonderful.
Now, I want to use this container controller in a navigation view. This is to get push segues to work. In effect, from my contained controllers, I want to be able to use the navigation stack, push a new controller on, and pop when the user is done.
However, I have noticed that if the navigation view is instantiated with my container controller as the root container, things fall apart.
In particular, I have noticed this:
In the iOS documentation, container controllers call addChildController: and then addSubview:. This seems to break the navigation stack, as the push segue does not work - it behaves like modal. I believe it does this because addSubview resets the navigation stack.
I confirmed this by replacing addChildController and addSubview with [self.navigationController pushViewController...]. I confirmed it is a problem with addSubview because I can reproduce the issue when I omit the call to addChildController.
When I do this, the navigation stack works properly. But of course, my container controller does not, as only the "most recently pushed" controller is visible.
I'm doing this because in my contained controllers, I want to push a new controller onto the stack, and when the user is done, I want to "pop" the stack, without reloading the "previous controller".
Using a modal segue reloads the previous controller; using a push controller does not.
I cannot find any documentation on the behavior of addSubview and it's effect on the navigation stack.
Thank you in advance for any light you guys can shed!
I'm having a bit of trouble completely understanding what you are doing, but I think that what you want to do is exactly what I'm doing.
I have a UINavigationController that has as its rootView a container UIViewController. That controller adds children per the normal methods. One of those children views pushes other views that may get popped.
One of those pushed views COULD message the appDelegate and make itself the rootViewController if it wanted to. In general, as long as you keep a strong reference to a view controller, you can remove it from whoever 'owns' it, and muck around with the navigationControllers viewControllers array to your hearts content.

Increasing number of living Views

I've set up a really simple project using storyboards including two views as shown here: http://i.stack.imgur.com/iRx21.png. The navigation can be done by either selecting a cell in the custom table view or hitting the back button labelled with "<<". Everything works fine except the following:
when I switch between the views, every time an instantiation happens. The profiling shows an increasing number of view objects. I would like to keep only one of each view and instantiation should be happen only once. What am I doing wrong? (I'm using ARC.)
Thanks in advance!
You should not link your back button to the parent view controller. This is what causes the new instantiation.
The way to go is to embed the table view into UINavigationController (in IB, choose Editor -> Imbed In -> Navigation Controller. Then change your segue to a Push segue. You can of course hide the navigation bar etc. to make things look exactly as you like. Then, link the back button to the controller with an IBAction and in the handler do a simple
[self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:YES];
This would be the appropriate logic of what you are doing. Of course, you can also push the web view modally and then handle the button click with
[self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];

SIGABRT error when setting Tab Bar View Controller to custom view controller

I have been developing an iPhone application using the Detail View template. At some point I realized that I wanted my application to have a Tab Bar View controller as the root view controller. It seems that you do not want to push a tab bar view controller onto a navigation view controller. So I decided to start a new tab bar project and migrate my existing application code over. I thought this would be easiest.
So I have done that and the project builds without a problem. But I cannot seem to reassign the tab bar view controllers to ones which I already have. So I am replacing, "FirstViewController" with one of my custom ones. When I attempt to run the application it calls:
- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation
And bombs with a SIGABRT error. I'm not sure why this is. I cannot see what the default view controller (firstviewcontroller) is implementing that my custom view controller is not.
Can anyone give me some ideas of what I should check?
Thanks!
update
It seems that my problem is related to the fact that my custom viewcontroller is of type UITableViewController. If I change this to be of type UIViewController it seems to work.
Update
I added a Navigation controller to the storyboard and created a relationship from it to a blank TableViewController. Then I assigned this TableViewController to my custom UITableViewController class. This seems to work. I'm not sure what plumbing was missing before.