I have created a simple project with a storyboard, and now realize that they don't support iOS 4.x and that I would like users with these devices to be able to download my app. The app is just a flipside view controller, and is fairly simple but if there's a way to just extract the XIBs from the storyboard I'd much prefer to do that than recreate it.
tl;dr: getting .xibs out of a .storyboard?
Xib files cannot be extracted from the storyboard but you can instantiate UIViewControllers out of the storyboard by instantiating your storyboard into a UIStoryboard Object and getting the UIViewController via its identifier, here's how I do it:
UIStoryboard *storyboard = [UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:
#"MainStoryboard_iPhone" bundle:[NSBundle mainBundle]];
UIViewController *myController = [storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:#"myId"];
hope this helps.
I found that the simplest method was to copy and paste the items out of the storyboard, one view at a time, and recreate the view controllers for each one.
However, for anybody who does this, note that you have to make a xib for MainWindow in addition to all of your other XIBs, and hook it up accordingly, including setting up the window and app delegate. Storyboards handle all of this for you, so when you try to avoid them, you have a lot of manual setting up that creating non-storyboard projects from the get-go handles for you. Don't do what I did, and try to make your root controller your main view controller, because it will go nuts saying things about how UIApplication isn't key-value compliant for individual properties of your XIB.
As a few others have suggested, your best bet is to clone the views from storyboard into an XIB.
It's not possible to get xib files. Your storyboard is compiled to nib files and packaged into a storyboardc file within your app bundle.
To locate the nib files select your built executable in Finder and right-click 'Show package contents'. Navigate to the en.lproj directory and find the storyboard.storyboardc file. Right-click 'Show package contents' again on the storyboard file and you will find your nibs. They will not be much use to you though because they are compiled binary nibs.
You may not be able to extract the .xibs from the storyboard, but try this. Have your .xib based project open and create the empty .xib files for your views and also have the storyboard project open at the same time. Select all the UI elements in your storyboards scene and simply drag and drop them over to the .xib based project. I have done this the other way around (moving from .xib to storyboard) with no problems.
Related
I was an iOS programmer and recently switched over to making Cocoa apps for Mac. When creating a project in Xcode, it seems there are two options:
(1) Using the MainMenu.xib default, insert buttons and link to AppDelegate. I have tried creating an NSView class and linking to that with no success.
(2) Creating an NSViewController class and linking the view from MainMenu.xib and any buttons to that.
Which of these methods is better when creating larger applications, with multiple views and windows?
Edit: What would be the best way to start out if not connecting anything to AppDelegate? Create an NSWindowController class with an xib and connect its view to a NSViewController class?
I guess overall I am confused as to which class I start with and what elements (window, views, buttons) to connect to what class file.
You can create a window object in your MainMenu xib and create a reference to it in your AppDelegate class. You will be able access items in it. But this is good only for a little learning.
You should start with an NSWindowController. For a first try, don't make any view controllers yet. Use the xib file and build your first window in the subclass of NSWindowController.
In AppDelegate, create an instance of the new class and open it.
Once you have mastered that, you can define view controllers for parts (or all) of you window's view.
If you need sample code, let me know, but it's a good exercise to work it out.
I created an empty iPad TabBar application using XCode 4, without storyboards. I placed that app in a workspace. I then added the Kal source (obtained from the iPad Juice build) to the workspace as a separate project. The initial build was clean.
I then went to the Kal example (NativeKal) and added EventKitDataSource.h and .m, and NativeCalAppDelegate.h and .m. (The image below shows what files are in the example project)
This is the code from the NativeCalAppDelegate.h file:
I tried setting the first TabBar UIView controller to "KalViewController" as I would normally do when using Storyboards, but it isn't listed in the drop down list of classes.
The question is: how do I get the NativeCal example view controller to replace FirstViewController in the in my TabBar application?
Comments added as Answer.
My recommendation is to switch to storyboards it is a lot easier to do UITabBarControllers in them. You can do this by just creating a new storyboard and copy and paste everything into it and then control drag from the UITabBarController to the UIViewControllers that you want to be linked to the tab bar controller and it does the rest for you, everything else is the same after that. In storyboards you can set the first view controller to be loaded so if you need it to be KalController then you can set it when you set up the UITabBarController. You can also set this in the code. I found that storyboards were a great new feature to xcode, UITabBarCotrollers are a lot easier to do in them then in .nib files I could never get them to work.
Hope this has helped.
I have in an app a viewController without a .xib, because I want to use with that ViewController a storyboard instead. The problem is that I don't know how to tell Xcode that ViewController2.storyboard is the view of ViewController2.h and ViewController2.m. Anyone knows it?
When you use storyboards, you generally instantiate the view controller inside the storyboard. The big advantage that storyboards have over .xibs is that they model not just the view hierarchy but also the flow from one view controller to the next. So, you'll probably want to either instantiate your view controller in the storyboard where you plan to use it, or else just go back to loading the view from a .xib (which isn't all that different anyway).
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.
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.