Is it not possible to reuse a UIView with constraints etc, from one view to another. I have tried:
Note: I am not in storyboard, but using xib file in a framework that I am creating - therefore I am using only UIView from xib files.
Tried to reference view in the same xib file.
#IBDesignable incl all custom classe setup.
I am only looking for reusing a UIView incl. constraints.
Regards
You can't do this through the storyboard because constraints are not made to be generalized through viewcontrollers. If you copy and paste constraints, they'll look for the exact views they used to constrain which won't be there anymore.
However if you have multiple views that look similar, then my suggestion would be to make a base class where you layout the view once on the storyboard and then subclass it. Or, your other option would be programmatic.
Related
I have a main .xib view with parts of it being made up of custom views. At the same time I have also created separate .xib subviews (together with their respective .h and .m files). These custom classes were then connected to the custom views in the main .xib
This setup works fine however I would like to have a number of NSViewController(s) control each of the different custom views. What is the recommended way to do this?
Eg. Main.xib > contains 'custom views' > each using an NSView custom class and designed in it's own .xib
An NSViewController class would respond to events occurring in one of these custom views instead of the NSViewController tied to Main.xib
I've ended up creating NSViewControllers with XIB files instead of the custom views I had previously.
I then created NSBox components for every custom view that I had. I connected each of these to the main NSViewController via IBOutlet(s).
Finally, I attached each custom view to the dedicated NSBoxes via the IBOutlets as follows:
- (void) awakeFromNib{
[super awakeFromNib];
//instantiate custom view controller
CustomViewController* customViewController = [[CustomViewController alloc] initWithNibName:#"CustomViewController"
bundle:nil];
[self.customNSBoxView setContentView:[customViewController view]];
}
What I've tended to do is just create a new NSViewController subclass and choose the 'Create XIB' option.
From there, I instantiate the view controller subclass and add it to the view hierarchy in code.
This doesn't completely do what you are suggesting, but it does keep things more modular / easier to test. The downside is that its challenging then to setup constraints between the parent and children. I've tended to do this manually as well, or add the subcontroller's view into a NSStackView which gives you some constraints.
There's probably a better way, but this is what we used in our multi-xib project.
I am trying to design a custom UICollectionViewCell prototype (in Xcode 5.0.2), however Interface Builder doesn't let me add a cell to my UICollectionView while designing a nib. I can set the number of items (cells) and Interface Builder creates and displays cells perfectly if I'm using storyboard, but I can't add a cell to my collection view in a nib. I've tried:
Drag and dropping collection view cell into collection view manually from the object library. (fails: doesn't let me drop the cell anywhere in my view)
Creating my collection view with cells in storyboard and copy-pasting the whole view into nib. (fails: collection view is copied but the cell is gone)
Creating my collection view with cells in storyboard, opening the storyboard as source code, finding my collection view cells, copying the relevant XML, opening my nib as source code, pasting it inside my collection view in XML. (fails: unable to open the nib in Interface Builder, it gives errors. When I remove the cell from source code, it opens again. Do not try this if you don't know what you are doing.)
I've also seen several questions about the same issue:
Is it possible to create prototype cells in Interface Builder without story boards?
Custom Header in UICollectionView with Interface Builder without Storyboard
Prototype Cells in a nib instead of a storyboard
They all point out to doing them programatically and/or using another nib for the cell. I know how to do them, but is there any way to design the collection view cell, inside a collection view inside the same view in a nib, just as in storyboard? Why doesn't Interface Builder let me do that in nib where it allows (and even encourages) perfectly using storyboard?
The simple answer is no, this cannot be done. Think of a storyboard as a collection of XIBs. A XIB simply defines the facets of a particular view so that it can be constructed at runtime.
Regarding collection views and their storyboard implementations, it's important to understand that a storyboard allows for nesting of viewcontrollers and defining collection views with their XIBs because that keeps the fundamental paradigm of storyboards coherent. Since a storyboard is the means of defining the "story" or scene of an application it is only natural that it allows for the declaration of the reusable views for use inside a collection view.
The same cannot be said for XIBs because the fundamental idea behind XIBs is in reusability. This will allow a collection view defined in a XIB to have any cells used with it as long as the controller registers these classes with the collection view. This way you get the benefit of reusability as another controller can use the same XIB and register different cells etc.
So I think it would be far more confusing to allow for the declaration of the supported cells of a collection view inside a XIB since that breaks the single responsibility principle(if it can be called that) that XIBs aspire to.
Your best solution would be to define a custom collection view subclass that registers the relevant cells on instantiation, and then use this class in your XIB.
I still have a lot to learn with cocoa so I may have missed something obvious here. I have a custom view I would like to display in an nssplitview which replaces the current subview there.
I have a MessageView.xib file, and a MessageView .h/.m which subclasses NSView. I created a custom view instance for my main window (the one which contains the nssplitview) through Xcode 4's built in gui builder. I created an outlet to this instance of MessageView in my window's controller.
In my controller for the window when I want to swap out the subview for the splitview it runs this
[splitView replaceSubview:[[splitView subviews] objectAtIndex:1] with:viewMessage];
viewMessage is the outlet to the MessageView.
When this code is run the display of that subview changes to be blank. I'm not sure if there is something wrong with my custom view or there is some size issue. Is there something I need to do to fit the view into the split screen view or is my custom view just not displaying correctly? I have had a difficult time finding a tutorial on creating custom subviews with Xcode 4 so I'm not sure if something could be wrong with that. The custom view just has a label and a textfield in it.
Generally, you shouldn't need to replace NSSplitView's subviews with your own. Rather, you add your own custom view(s) as child views of the default subviews on each side of the divider. You can do this in code with addSubview:, but it's probably easier to just use Interface Builder in Xcode. Drag a "Custom View" into the splitview, then in the Identity Inspector, under Custom class, change the class to the name of your custom NSView subclass:
I think (off the top of my head, not tested), if you really do need to replace the default NSSplitView subviews with your own class, you can probably do it in Interface Builder using this same method, but selecting the default subview itself and changing its class in the inspector. This doesn't work for all AppKit classes, but it may work for NSSplitView.
I have been struggling quite a bit with this problem and I can't seem to figure it out by myself.
This is the situation:
I want to have a custom Nib-based view, with its own ViewController. I then want to add this view to a window. Therefore the window should contain my custom view.
So I go about and create a very simple example like this:
In Xcode 4 I create a new blank document-based Cocoa application
I create a new Cocoa Class which should extend from NSViewController (which causes the nib to be created along with the .h and .m file. The name of the created .h, .m und .xib file is FaceViewController for testing purposes it should only display text for now.
I open the NSViewController.xib in InterfaceBuilder and add a multi-line text component and place it in the custom view, which is already in the xib file. I make the text span the whole view.
In MyDocument.xib I also add a Custom View place holder, which should be replaced with my custom FaceView.
From this starting point on, everything I tried to include the created View + ViewController on my MyDocument.xib failed and the area where my text should be shown remains empty (just like the background of the underlying window.
So my question really is what I need to do, so that my FaceView gets loaded into the Custom View which I placed on MyDocument.xib. Here are some things which are unclear to me:
The custom View extends from NSView so I wanted to change this to my FaceView but the view does not exist as a class but is defined in InterfaceBuilder in the xib, do I need to set this to anything other than NSView?
Do I have to alloc, init the FaceViewController in code or is it enough to drag it into either of my two .xibs?
Can I use InterfaceBuilder to place my FaceView or do I have to do this programmatically?
I really thought that creating a custom view like this would be a piece of cake but it turned out quite the opposite so far, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
You can create your FaceViewController either by adding one to the MyDocument.xib or by creating it with alloc, init.
To place your FaceView you'll have to do it programmatically, you can use
[customView addSubview:[FaceViewController view]];
of if you want to replace the view
[customView replaceSubview:oldView with:[FaceViewController view]];
When I create a new UIViewController in xcode, it offers to make me an associated nib for the interface. However, when I create a UIView, it does not. If my understanding of MVC is correct, views should really be the parts that contain the interface elements (i.e. the nib) while view controllers are the parts that hook the functionality to the views they control.
I'm sure I'll be able to get it working together either way, so this is more of an exploratory question.
This seems like a case where I'm missing some fundamental understanding of how these two parts should be used. What am I missing?
Because UIView is usually not used in such way.
However How do I associate a nib (.xib) file with a UIView?
The answer I eventually got that satisfied my interest was roughly this:
The job of a view controller is to manage a view hierarchy. Interface Builder is an excellent tool for creating view hierarchies. Xcode offers to create a .xib when you create a new view controller because chances are high that you'll want to load the controllers' views from a .xib.
.xib files aren't necessarily meant to hold every UIView (or subclass) that goes into the view, just a general outline of views that don't change during the life of the view. The other UIViews are much easier to create programmatically since they change often.
I had a similar confusion. Basically (according to the MVC) the View is contained inside the Controller. In the iPhone this means that UIViewController has a property called 'view' which is a UIView instance.
A XIB file (and this is not mentioned often) is a serialised UIView instance. It is roughly an XML sub format which represents a UIView with all its subsequent views. So when you create a UIViewController, a UIView is created in the form of a XIB and bounded to that controller.
A new UIView therefore does not have a XIB because they are essentially the same thing...