UIView controller containing toolbar and UITabBarController - objective-c

I'm currently creating an ipad application.
the idea is to have a toolbar at the top and a tabbar at the bottom.
The toolbar has to be visible on all tabs, so it won't disappear.
I was thinking about having a UIViewController as the main view and put the tool bar in there.
Then adding the uitabbarcontroller to that main view controller, but i'm not sure how to do that.
At the moment i have my tabbarcontroller as the main view and added the toolbar to every tab.
Can anyone help?
Thanks

The Tab Bar Controller should be at the root. What you can do is create a method that returns a propertly configured toolbar & add it to each of the view controller's viewDidLoad (either by using a category method, inheriting a common UIViewController subclass, or simply via a C-style factory method.
This way your hierarchy isn't flipped, and the tab bar is at the root like it should be.

Related

Add a UINavigationBar and UIToolbar to modal UITableViewController

I'm creating an app that has a similar layout as the Apple Contacts app. I have created a UITableViewController and embedded it in a UINavigationController using a Storyboard. I then have an add button that opens a UITableViewController in a modal view. I have added a top bar to this view using the storyboard and it works pretty good. The problem is that it scrolls away when you scroll in the table. It should stick to the top.
Do I need to embed this modal UITableViewController in a UINavigationController as well to get the "sticky top bar"?
What's the preferred way of doing this? Just embed using the storyboard or just create one "on the fly" in the prepareForSegue method?
EDIT
I ended up just embedding the modal UITableViewControllers in UINavigationControllers using Storyboard.
Yes, you do need a UINavigationController that contains the UITableViewController to get what you aim for.
Personally, I would prefer creating it "on the fly" as you call it. But that is a matter of taste.
The way to do it in the storyboard is to have your modal view controller be a UIViewController rather than a UITableViewController. Add a view controller, then drag in a tool bar, and position it at the top. Then add a table view to take up the rest of the space below the tool bar. This will work correctly without scrolling with the table view.

Add other objects to iOS 5 storyboard after tableview

I have a simple iOS 5 storyboard that contains a tableview controller scene. However, the table UI takes up 100% of the real estate and I am unable to add any additional objects such as a title bar. Any object that I drag to the scene will try to size correctly and what-not but as soon as I let go it will not add the object. What am I doing wrong?
If all you want is a title bar, then it looks like you want to embed your table view controller in a navigation controller. You can do this by selecting your table view controller and using the Editor: Embed In: Navigation Controller menu command. Once you do this, you should have a navigation bar, and you can double click it to edit the title.
If you need arbitrary UI elements along with your table view, then I think you need to use a plain UIViewController scene instead of a UITableViewController, and manually drag a UITableView into the scene. Your view controller would not subclass UITableViewController, instead it would subclass UIViewController and implement the UITableViewControllerDelegate and UITableViewControllerDataSource protocols. Also, you would need to manually wire up the delegate and dataSource outlets by ctrl-dragging from the table view to your view controller in interface builder, and your view controller would need a custom tableView outlet that points to the UITableView and is correctly wired up in IB. Perhaps there is a simpler approach than this though, if someone has a better suggestion that would be great to hear.

UINavgationController and UITabBarController together

I am trying to create a view with a TableView in the center, NavigationBar on top, and a TabBar with 5 items. The TabBarItems will be attached to 5 different modal views. And the tableview can select an item and "navigate" to another tableview or detail view.
Following the Apple doc, I tried to create a NavigationController in a TabBarController in IB, but failed. I read all the posting regarding to this topic, and they all described a NavigationController inside one of the TabBarItem. But that is not what I want. The TabBarController and NavigationController are separate controller doing separate thing in the same view.
So I start wondering maybe it is a design issue. I should just use a NavigationController and add the TabBar as objects and not controller in the view.
Am I going the right track or is there a better way to combine NavigationController and TabBarController in IB to do the job that I want. Am I making sense?
If the tab bar is actually being used as a tab bar, it sounds like you want 5 navigation controllers, one for each tab.
If the tab bar is being used as a toolbar to hold buttons that bring up modal view controllers, push views onto the navigation controller, or other actions besides what a tab bar is intended for, use a UIToolbar instead. UINavigationController actually has toolbar support built in, just set its toolbarHidden property to NO and set the toolbarItems property on each view controller that can go inside the navigation controller to an array of appropriate UIBarButtonItems.

Showing UITabBar in a separate view

I'm new to Xcode/Cocoa/Objective-C, and I need a little help.
Essentially, I'm working on an app in which the first window has a couple of buttons; this is the Main Menu. When pressed, a button opens up a separate view that has a UITabBar and a Navigation Bar at the top that leads back to the Main Menu.
My two questions:
How do you make a UITabBar appear only in certain views?
How do you create a button to switch between nib files and not only views?
I've been using a RootViewController and TabBarController classes to be used by my RootView.xib (which is the main menu that holds the buttons) and a couple .xib files for the tab bar views (one nib file has each of the two views for the tab bars and nav bar).
I'd really appreciate any help with this!
present your view with buttons modaly in your appDelegate. When you dismiss this view set a view controller with setSelectedViewController: as rootController in your TabBarControllers array.
Hope this helps

Setting Toolbar Items of UINavigationController

In iPhone OS 3.0, you can set the toolbar items of a UINavigationController using the setToolbarItems:animated: method. However, this requires you pass in an array of UIToolbarItems. While I could programmatically create these toolbar items, I'd rather create them in Interface Builder if possible.
With this in mind, I have created a UIToolbar in "MyGreatViewController.xib" and have populated it with the wanted toolbar items. Then, in "MyGreatViewController.m", I get the items from the toolbar and pass them to setToolbarItems:animated::
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
[self setToolbarItems: [toolbar items]];
}
...where toolbar is an IBOutlet referring to the UIToolbar.
Is this a good approach? Is there a better way to accomplish this? Should I just create the items programmatically?
I don't know if this is documented anywhere, but I've found that in Interface Builder, if you enable the navigation controller's toolbar, you can drag bar items to your view controller, and they will automagically show up in the navigation controller's toolbar.
For example, here's what we can do (using Xcode 3.2 on Snow Leopard):
File->New Project.... Choose Navigation-based Application and create the project.
Open MainWindow.xib in Interface Builder.
Select the Navigation Controller, and in the Attributes inspector, check the "Shows Toolbar" box. This will cause a Toolbar object to appear.
Drag a Bar Button Item from the Library to the toolbar. It will appear in the toolbar. If you check the hierarchy in the NIB, you'll see that this new item is a child of the RootViewController.
It seems that any Bar Button Items added as children of the navigation item will show up in the navigation bar, and any Bar Button Items added as children of the view controller will show up in the toolbar.
(I stumbled on this by accident. If anyone can find documentation for this behavior, or any additional info, I'd like to hear about it.)
It's a perfectly acceptable way of doing it, but do bear in mind that loading xib files is quite expensive on the iPhone, and it may well be faster to create the toolbar items programatically in your viewDidLoad method.