not a viewcontroller, but an actual view
My app will include a piano keyboard in two separate sections. Instead of duplicating the code for each part, I'd rather make the keyboard a custom view and implement it into the respective viewcontrollers. However, itseems like it would be a pain to code the position each key, so I was hoping there was someway I could do it visually.
And if not, is there a way I could make the keyboard its own viewcontroller, and then add that as a subclass of the viewcontrollers that represent the different sections of the app?
Thanks
So you mean each piano key is a separate UIView, you could have a UIControl subclass (UIView subclass) that contains the key sub views, it would seem to me that it would be easier in you UIContol subclass to add all of the UIView subclasses for each key pragmatically because there is a nice mathematical relationship between each key you could then place your UIControl in twice in your view and set its subclass to you custom UIControl class. You could then add you individual key UIView subclasses by overriding -[UIView layoutSubviews] perhaps, you could manually add you key UIView in interface builder if you want, but the seems like a lot more work. You can have as many instances of your subclass keyboard in interface builder as you want and they don,t each have to have there own UVIewController, you Keyboard sub class can be the target of each key press from each button and then pass that onto the viewcontroller anyway you want, though I don't now how you would deal with polyphony that way if you need that,
Not sure what you are asking, you can add a View class to your interface and then in under the Utilities Panel > Identity Inspector there is a custom class field which you can change to a Custom subclass of NSView.
If you want to create your own Customer fire that shows up in interface builder the search for custom IBPlugins, I haven't tried to do this with Xcode 4 so I don't know how much it has changed since Interface Builder was integrated with Xcode 4. Though this is something I have to looking got one of my own custom controls.
Related
I am new to storyboard. I used to make my view using code. I have a question.
I created a view controller
#interface FunctionViewController : UIViewController
And I have use my code to add
a full screen button (alpha : 0.5)
a popup-like view in the middle (not full screen)
Then I created another Viewcontroller
#interface PlayFunctionViewController : FunctionViewController
and add some views on the popup-like view
I want to recreate these stuff by using storyboard.
How can I build these using interface builder and storyboard so that
I don't need to layout the full screen button and the popup-like view in every subclass of FunctionViewController?
You can't inherit the layout of a superclass in a subclass in a storyboard, i.e. if you visually lay out elements in a view controller in a storyboard and connect them to code, subclasses of that view controller, and even other instances of the same class, will have to be laid out individually, and will not automatically be populated or updated.
In other words, in a storyboard, you will have to manually lay out and connect all your interface elements in every individual instance and subclass that you add to the storyboard. This gives you flexibility in that you can reuse multiple instances of the same class throughout your app and lay them out differently, but it does not give you the ability to inherit layouts.
If you want to inherit your layout in subclasses, do your layout programmatically in the viewDidLoad of your superclass, and then all of your subclasses will have those interface elements, even if you design and lay them out in your storyboard (they will not be visible in the storyboard, but they will appear when you build and run your app).
Basically, if you want to have interface elements that are the same in a class and all its subclasses, create them programmatically, and they will exist in all instances and subclass instances, even if you create and design the instances themselves in your storyboard.
You can mix code and storyboard, so you can create some elements in your storyboard, but others that need to be present in all instances and subclasses, in code.
I ran into a similar issue, and though it was time consuming but creating a delegate and reusing it in multiple view controllers was a much better solution. Although that beats the whole point of 'Inheritance'.
I understand the concept of MVC. At least I hope I do but there is a particular situation that I have encountered recently that makes me think that I actually have no idea.
Problem:
I am trying to create a class that when applied to an existing button adds the functionality of editing that button's title. It does so by dynamically generating a UITextField that will in turn be populated with the Button's new name. I hold the logic of adding the UITextField in a class called CustomAnimation and initializing it in the following way:
CustomAnimation *yar = [[CustomAnimation alloc] initWithButton:customButton];
The problem that I encounter is when I am trying to dynamically create a UIButton from a custom class like CustomAnimation and try to assign a target/action to it. Since the UIButton is actually generated inside the ViewController FROM the CustomAnimation class the former should get a pointer to the parent ViewController and then set it as the target.
[classButton addTarget:viewController action:#selector(dostuff:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];
All is good except one thing - dostuff method should reside inside the ViewController in order to be visible for that button and here everything turns into a hack.
What is the correct approach when you want to generate temporary UI elements from inside a Class instead of the Controller?
Thank you
There are lots of ways you can look at MVC in terms of granularity. If I understand your question correctly you are trying to implement MVC at a single control level which is - in my opinion - too finely grained. I try to aim for a more coarse approch where a controller manages a chunk of UI controls, e.g. a view or a window.
You could argue that the editability of the buttons label is bahavior that belongs to the button (encapsulated by it), hence its implementation is or should be part of the overall implementation of the button. Once you accept that, you could implement this as a subclass of UIButton and move the code that is in CustomAnimation to your subclass of UIButton. Or encapsulate CustomAnimation in your subclass of UIButton, whichever is more appriopriate.
I am working to create a custom view for an iPhone app I'm creating. This custom view is a Popover dialog which is made up of a UIView which contains two images, a button to close the dialog, a label, and a UIScrollView. This view is named MDPopoverCard. I have these files as a part of my view:
MDPopoverCard.xib - The view as drawn up in Interface Builder.
MDPopoverCard.h - Defines a few IBActions and some other properties
MDPopoverCard.m - Implements some functions defined in the header
This is what it looks like in Interface Builder: http://cl.ly/2B0f2x3s1w1i0K2G0Q1r (sorry, I can't post an image yet as I'm new to stackoverflow)
There are a few properties defined in my .m and .h files that control whether the green button is displayed and what the text of the title label is.
I need to display a number of these dialogs in my app and I'd like to reuse this interface I've designed. I want to be able to add buttons and other form elements into the UIScrollView via Interface Builder. However, I have a problem:
Imagine that I have another view I'm drawing up in Interface Builder. I add a UIView to it and set its class to MDPopoverCard. I then drag a couple UIButton objects into my MDPopoverCard view. Here's an example of what it looks like in Interface Builder:
http://cl.ly/1X090h1t1q3f0i3E0917
This screenshot shows another view (the root view) that I've added my MDPopoverCard to. I've then added two buttons as subviews of MDPopoverCard.
These buttons do get properly nested in Interface Builder. However, when I run my app these buttons are added before any of the items that make up my MDPopoverCard view in the xib file. This means that the buttons are being added behind my popover dialog. That's the first problem.
The second problem is that I want these buttons and form elements to actually be added into the UIScrollView that's contained within the MDPopoverCard view, and not just right into the UIView's subviews array. Is there a way to specify this in Interface Builder? I'd really much rather draw buttons into my UIView and connect them to IBActions via Interface Builder than hand write every instance of these dialogs that I may need to display (several).
Any advice? Is there anything I can do to clarify the question?
Thanks for your help!
Formerly Xcode supported user-defined IB plugins for custom UI elements which you could just drag and drop into the XIBs the same way you do with built-in widgets. As of Xcode 4 this nice feature has been removed. (Thanks a lot, Apple.)
Currently I can only think of a hacky way to achieve what you described. What I would do is the following:
create an IBOutletCollection on your MDPopoverCard, e.g. embeddedControls
link it with every UI element (here: the buttons) you want to go inside the scroll view
implement the awakeFromNib in MDPopoverCard and explicitly reset the superview of all the views in embeddedControls to the scroll view in there
Hope this helps (although I haven't tried).
I need a custom button like Instragram has in profile tab (the buttons that shows the number of photos and followers) but i don't know how to start to implement it.
Do i need to subclass UIButton or is there other way easier?
I think, the easiest approach would be to create a UIButtom with the typeUIButtonTypeCustom and add a subview to it with imageviews and labels as subviews to create the UI. Composition over inheritance.
Subclassing UIButton seems to me to be the obvious solution. I agree that subclassing UIViewController makes no sense. You don't use UIViewController objects to manipulate individual subviews within a view hierarchy controlled by another UIViewController object.
There are plenty of ways to do this, personally I would subclass UIViewController. Then you can edit its .xib in interface builder to make it look however you want and set different values programmatically. Then to detect a tap on the button you can just use the touchesBegan and touchesEnded (I'm pretty sure those aren't complete method names, check in the docs for more info on them) methods. If you want you could also set up a UITapGestureRecognizer for the view instead.
Assume you do not have a UIController to do the job. From inside the UIView .. how would you replace self with another UIView?
It's not very clear what you are trying to do from your question. UIController is not a class, for instance.
Ideally your app should be structured something like this:
UIViewController subclass
Controls a set of objects that are all on screen at one time. For example, any number of UITextFields, UIButtons, UIViews and UILabels.
has methods (IBActions and other delegate methods) which are triggered by user interaction with the controls and inputs.
has IBOutlets which allow it to manipulate what the user sees on screen. For instance an IBOutlet attached to a UILabel allows changing the text when a user presses a button.
UIView is only generally subclassed if you need custom drawing code, or some kind of custom control. Don't put application logic here if you can help it, and you can usually help it.
You can have multiple UIViewControllers but they usually function very independently. Often View Controllers don't maintain references for other view controllers. If they do it's loose couplings like the delegate pattern.
Bottom line: if you have two views controllers that need to communicate with each-other, you need to have a reference to one from the other. This usually occurs in the form of a property on one or both of the view controllers, and is connected either by interface builder or at run time when you create them.
You can add another subview using self.addSubview: you may also want to check self.bringSubviewToFront:
For more information, check the docs:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/uiview_class/uiview/uiview.html