What would be the specific steps and code (aka, the simplest possible example) - as per best practices in Swift/Xcode - for developing a dynamic UI with the following "Hello World" implementation requirements?
Create a single view controller with a specific layout - let's say just 2 labels (First Name and State), and 2 buttons (Back and Next)
Be able to then reuse that layout as many times as necessary for a new/subsequent screen, that user can navigate to from where the user is currently at, and where the same layout components (Name and State) are updated with the content for the specific screen (in the sequence) that will be shown
Here's a screen shot of what that could like if the screens are hardcoded in the StoryBoard, where the next buttons are connected with Show Segues:
I am new to Swift/Xcode, coming from a background in Android development. Studying Swift, I have not so far run across much tutorials to implement this kind of UI/UX via a dynamic approach with a reusable layout definition. The tutorials I'm seeing seem to all require that every screen that is necessary, be explicitly added via the IDE StoryBoard
For a concrete/specific example of what I'm looking for, in Android the common way to solve for this is :
Create a Java class that extends Fragment, and a corresponding layout that has the 2 text labels and 2 buttons
For the fragment - define a constructor that takes 2 parameters: Name, State
Every time a new screen is needed, a new instance is generated where the contructor is called with the necessary Name and State parameters for the new view
The new instance is pushed onto the fragment manager instance, and that causes the new screen to load for the user
When user clicks Next (where next is possible), steps 3-4 are repeated for the new content
Use UINavigationController and hide navigation bar.
advantage: navigationcontroller could help you 'next' and 'back' view controllers easily.
it's a good way for your achieve.
Use ContainerView.
it's more like fragment in android.
Use uiview only.
it's simple and easily.
Related
I'm creating a simple (or so I thought) app that allows a user to drag/drop/reorder items within one of two recyclerview lists, or from one list to another. It should animate as you are dragging items, opening gaps that help you easily drop the item into the target spot. This functionality needs to go both ways between the lists. And for extra fun, drag should start on touch, not long press.
In case it makes any difference I'm trying to stick to MVVM, and my 2 recyclerviews are in 2 different fragments, but combined in one screen for this activity.
I'm a relative newbie to android, and using kotlin.
What I have managed so far
I can achieve a nice animation within one recyclerview, using ItemTouchHelper.
OR
I can achieve drag and drop from one recyclerview to the other, and I can start that on touch rather than long press, using View.OnDragListener.
What I can't seem to do is get both of those working at once--drag to another view, but with those beautiful animations ItemTouchHelper provides as the drag is underway.
I have tested all kinds of combinations of attaching customized drag or touchlisteners to my viewholders or recyclerviews. The closest I've gotten to getting things working is attaching the draglistener to the recyclerviews only, in order to receive the dropped view. Then I have set draglisteners and touchhelpers on the viewholders (via the recyclerview adapter).
With this setup I can drag between or within recyclerviews on touch, and have managed to get an animation AFTER drop by calling onItemMove of my adapter (provided as a parameter in my custom draglistener) from within the ACTION_DROP of my dragListener.
I've been working on this for a VERY LONG TIME and googled the heck out of it without luck. Help deeply appreciated.
I have an app which allows users to send messages to each. The process is accomplished by saving the sent messages in a local SQLite database, while actually sending the messages to a database and using push notifications to send the message to the recipient's SQLite database. The set up I have works fine. However, what I am confused about is how to set up the actual interactive UI for the user (I am using XCode). I figured it should be a UITableView with each table cell representing a message. However, with this approach I run into a few requirements:
Variable TextView Sizes
Just as with regular iOS messaging, the TextView's size needs to be variable, adjusting its dimensions to fit all of the text in each message. I do not know how to accomplish this. I have a general understanding of how to generally vary sizes, but no clue how to dynamically have it based on the text within that view.
Variable TextView Positions
Again, just as with regular iOS messaging, the textview needs to be offset to either the right or left side depending on whether the sender was the user or who the are conversing with, respectively. I also do not know how to do this, because it changes the center of the textview.
Non-selectability
Xcode allows cells to be pressed. Handling what happens after this selection can be achieved by the didSelectRowatIndexPath tableView function. I can simply not implement this, but clicking on the cell causes it to turn darker to indicate it has been pressed. I would like to eliminate this while retaining the ability to, say, select some of the text and copy and paste it or whatever (just like messaging works normally on your phone).
Other Approaches?
This is the real meat of the question. I have considered the above approach because that is all that I have been able to come up with based on my limited experience with XCode UI elements. If there is a better approach (perhaps even a pod or framework) for this purpose I would love to hear it. I do not need the messaging UI to look amazing, just clean and crisp.
I suggest the following:
Variable TextView Sizes:
I assume you do use auto layout. If you don’t yet, please consider using it since it make life much easier!
If you use a UITableView, you can adjust the height of its UITableViewCells dynamically, depending on the actual content by using self-sizing cells. You can find a tutorial how to do this here.
Variable TextView Positions:
I assume you have a UITextView within a table view cell. In this case, you have to set auto layout constraints to the borders of the cell’s contentView. If you define a custom subclass of a UITableViewCell, you can define in this class 2 IBOutlet properties that are linked to say the left and the right layout constraints (e.g. var leftLayoutConstraint: NSLayoutConstraint). Then, you can set the constraint’s constant property as required when the cell is laid out, i.e. in the layoutSubviews function of the custom table view cell.
Non-selectability:
I am not sure what you mean by „I can simply not implement this“. Please make sure that you set the delegate property of the UITableView to the view controller where you want to handle cell selection. Selecting a cell changes the cells color by default, but you can change this: In the storyboard, select your table view’s prototype cell, and open Xcode’s utility pane (top rightmost button). Under „Table view cell“ you find „Selection“ that you can set to „None“.
I hope this helps!
I'm new to cocoa development, and been trying to look for something similar in the attached image.
Basically an app with multiple views or sections or panels, where I'd link separate classes to each of them instead of one Delegate class doing everything.
I'm also confused between the old xib and the new storyboard style and wondering how can I accomplish the same, like what kind of visual objects to use. attached images explains where I'm trying to get at.
In Mac OS Cocoa it's common to just uses plain NSView objects to hierarchically subdivide complex views.
If you also want visual dividers there's NSBox. For resizable parts use NSSplitView.
Regarding the controller tier it's also pretty common to set up individual controller objects for separated panes (subviews) in a window.
You are talking about one single view. So what is possible would be to create a background view and then add multiple custom subviews (NSView subclass), each with their own custom class to control them, and even custom controllers.
As to accomplish something that looks similar to the screenshot, you can select a few UI elements in interface builder and do Embed In > Box to group them like in the screenshot.
I’ve been reading through several books on Mac development, but cannot find the information I’m looking for.
The books all describe how to make floating windows or panes, but never mention how to make them all in one window. A simplified example of what I’m looking to create is shown below:
Basically, there will be three windows; A selector window with radio buttons to choose which NSDocument is currently being used, a window underneath that with buttons that show different windows to the right that allow viewing and manipulation of certain data.
For a example, each NSDocument may have a color value that can be set in the window shown by clicking view A, and some text strings that can be set in the window shown by clicking view B.
So the questions are:
Is it appropriate to use a single NSDocument sub-class for each Doc #1 and Doc #2?
Which classes should I use to set up the application as shown? NSWindowController? NSWindow? NSPanel?
I’m only looking for guidance on what to read up on, so any pointers are appreciated.
EDIT:
To clarify this further, I want to have a table view where the buttons are (View A & B), and by clicking them they will cause the other window/view to change it's contents.
It's like the split view in the iPad settings application, there is a table view on the left, and when it's pressed the right side changes.
The radio buttons are there only to illustrate that I want more than one Document. I'm guessing I need more than one to handle this? Or perhaps I should place them all in a single NSDocument? Somehow that doesn't seem right.
To achieve what you want you need one window (NSWindow), one window controller and various views each with their own view controller. There are several ways you could set this up, all depending on your requirements:
You'd have at least 3 views (instances of NSView): one for the selection of the document class, one for the view selection and one for the content. Each view is controlled by a view controller (instance of NSViewController). Additionally you can opt to wrap the views in split views (NSSplitView) so your user can resize the real estate available to each view.
You have one window with a window controller. If you choose a Document based app template in Xcode, Xcode will generate a subclass of NSDocument which you can use as your window controller (or choose to use Core Data and Xcode will generate a subclass of NSPersistentDocument with all bells and whistles you need to access Core Data for document persistency).
So to come back to your questions:
1: Yes, but depending on your requirements. If Doc #1 is a completely different thing than Doc #2 than you might need to re-evaluate. For example Doc #1 might have completely different persistent requirements than #2.
2: There's no single scenario here, but one that worked for me: Take the project template for a document based app (with or without Core Data). Use the generated subclass of NSDocument (or NSPersistentDocument) as your window controller. Use NSView to implement the views in your window where each view is managed by its own controller, which is an instance of NSViewController.
I know this is an old question, but a way to do it how you want would be to use: ContainerViews and set their embed segue to be the view controllers you want.
Fairly new to Mac and XCode 3.2.6 and iPad. I have a fairly simple business data model to implement on the iPad, but can't seem to find the combination of views and controllers to use.
It's a simple data collection program, but there are too many data fields to fit on a single screen so I've resorted to the Split View approach.
I've got eight rows of table data on the left; RootViewController is the default UITableViewController. I'm trying to write the program such that when any of those table rows are selected, the view on the right (Detail View) gets redrawn and populated with a bunch of different controls (labels, buttons, text fields, etc.) that correspond to the selection on the left. Currently all the Details views are plain UIViewControllers.
For instance, the first "tab" might be titled "Personal", and I need to display fields to collect info such as Name, DOB, Height, Weight, etc. The next one might be "Address" where I need to collect Street, City, ZIP Code, etc. The next one might be "Employer", where I'd like to collect the employer's name, address, phone number, etc. These are mostly static and unchanging, but there are enough fields for about 8 screens worth.
I've got all this laid out in Interface Builder, but when I run it on the iPad simulator and click the very first button on the very first view, the connected delegate isn't called. I've put a breakpoint there and it's not being hit.
Is there some special magic to using simple UIViewControllers on the right side of a UISplitViewController, as far as letting them contain other simple Label, TextBox, and Button controls?
Also is there any special magic in that the framework built the original start-up code with a RootViewController.h/.m and DetailViewController.h/.m pair? Am I correct in thinking that a single detail view represents the entire iPad screen to the right of the Table View, and that to add more "pages" we need to write more files and .XIBs like DetailViewController?
Final question is how to implement the data model for this app. I noticed when the project was first auto-created, there weren't any source files for the model. (Maybe most of the predefined app types don't auto-generate anything for the model, but I understand that's a big part of model-view-controller paradigm.) Anyway these data fields on all the various views will eventually be part of a SQLite record that I'd like to save and load from storage. Where would I begin to wire all that stuff in to all the auto-generated "view centric" code?
If anyone has seen a "how to write real business apps for the iPad" website along the lines of anything like this, please post the link. I'm not trying to display jpegs of various fruits in a single (reused) view on the right side; I'm trying to display several real controls for real-world data collection for a real business app.
Thanks!
Basic things if you haven't already done them:
Have you connected the interface object the user is pressing from it's INSIDE TOUCH UP event to an IBOUTLET that then refreshes the right side?
If you have, and you've mucked about a bit (ie renaming and moving stuff around), try deleting it from the right-click event panel and then reconnecting it to the same IBOUTLET again (you don't have to delete any code).
Also, if you are counting on some event to fire that isn't firing, you should search on that (ie VIEWDIDLOAD NOT FIRING) because that can both occasionally be "broken" (ie no connection to the Files Owner) but more often one might misunderstand when that actually gets fired (ie VIEWDIDLOAD vs VIEWDIDAPPEAR vs VIEWWILLAPPEAR etc.)
For your data model, CoreData is your friend. It provides a modell-oriented approach and easily allows to persist data.
For your navigation needs, I think a tabBarController better suits your needs.
Changing the detail view from the master view can be troublesome, especially when using a NavigationController as detail view. The best way I've found is using the NSNotificationCenter.
When using UISplitview I strongly recommend to support the iPad only when it's a business requirement - there are some changes in iOs 8 that make easier to use.