Disabling UIBarButtonItems in Nav Bar and Stopping Secondary Popvers - xcode

The issue is as follows: I have an iOS 9 app (Swift) with a nav bar that houses a bunch of UIBarButtonItems with segues to several UINavigationControllers that finally display tables, views etc. as popovers. Of course tapping one of these buttons does not automatically disable the other UIBarButtonItems in the nav bar and the user is free to tap them. With a popover already displaying however we get the following warning as this is against the HIG and also grounds for rejection:
Attempt to present UINavigationControllerViewController which is already presenting (null)
To take care of the issue once a popover is displaying a) the remaining UIBarButtonItems need to be disabled and b) displaying additional popovers needs to be halted.
So what is the best cause of action here? The isBeingPresented flag of the popover's view controller is not available in the governing view controller because one can't create outlets of one view controller in another and the navigationController's viewControllers array doesn't include external navigation controllers or their descendants.
My lame workaround involves a global appIsPresentingPopover Bool which is set to true in viewDidLoad and to false in viewDidDisappear in the mentioned view controllers. That Bool is then tested in the governing view controller's prepareForSegue method to stop additional popovers from displaying. It is also kvo'ed to disable any enabled UIBarButtonItems which now all have an outlet. Ugly!
What is the standard way of handling this common scenario?

Surprisingly simple solution and much more elegant than my initial attempt. I added segue identifiers for all involved popups and a UIViewController class variable. In prepareForSegue I set the variable to the destination view controller. Then in shouldPerformSegueWithIdentifier I simply check whether that popover variable is nil. If it is not, I dismiss the UIViewController and set it to nil. Finally I also followed Beau Nouvelle's suggestion and kept those buttons lit so users can switch directly between popovers. Thanks again.

Related

Leaving inputAccessoryView visible after keyboard is dismissed iOS8?

I want to make behavior like messaging app. I have been browsing Stack Overflow for solutions for this, and indeed there are plenty:
Leaving inputAccessoryView visible after keyboard is dismissed
This was the one that I found. But it seems things are a little different in iOS8. If I do the same thing in new iOS8 sdk, i get error:
'UIViewControllerHierarchyInconsistency', reason: 'child view controller:<UICompatibilityInputViewController: 0x7fdcb3441b10> should have parent view controller:<ViewController: 0x7fdcb3b1e9f0> but requested parent is:<UIInputWindowController: 0x7fdcb684c000>'
In order to test this more I made a sample project, just one controller with view on the bottom:
Outlet is connected to bottom view, that only has UITextField on it. Am I missing something and how do i get the desired behvior?
iOS8 has a retain cycle with the inputAccessoryView. Here's a good post that seems to have a good workaround:
http://derpturkey.com/uitextfield-docked-like-ios-messenger/
You are adding the someView to multiple superViews, which leads to inconsistent hierarchies (which it is telling you).
When the keyboard gets activated, it calls the inputAccessoryView() method to see if it needs to stick anything on top of the keyboard, and adds that to its own superView. But you already added it to the view through your storyboard.
Now there are 2 ways you can solve this:
Make a .xib with your view and return that one in your inputAccessoryView(), not adding it to any superview yourself (the keyboard will.
Or make it completely in code using NSLayoutConstraint.
You can add the following code to your ViewController which will persist the view even when the keyboard is hidden.
override func canBecomeFirstResponder() -> Bool {
return true
}
Look at this GitHub repo for an example.

How does one display a new view controller in the same Mac window?

I'm fairly new to Mac development and am slightly confused by the new "storyboard" feature in Xcode 6. What I'm trying to do is segue from one view controller to another in the same window. As of right now, all the different NSViewControllerSegues present the view controller in a new window, be it a modal or just another window. What I'd like to do is just segue within the same window, much in the same way one would on iOS (though an animated transition is not crucial). How would this be achieved?
If you provide a custom segue (subclass of NSStoryboardSegue) you can get the result you are after. There are a few gotchas with this approach though:
the custom segue will use presentViewController:animator so you will need to provide an animator object
because the presented view is not backed by a separate Window object, you may need to provide it with a custom NSView just to catch out mouse events that you don't want to propagate to the underlying NSViewController's view
there's also a Swift-only glitch regarding the custom segue's identifier property you need to watch out for.
As there doesn't seem to be much documentation about this I have made a small demo project with custom segue examples in Swift and Objective-C.
I also have provided some more detail in answer to this question.
(Reviving this as it comes up as first relevant result on Google and I had the same problem but decided against a custom segue)
While custom segues work (at least, the code given in foundry's answer worked under Swift 3; it needs updating for Swift 4), the sheer amount of work involved in writing a custom animator suggests to me that their main use case is custom animations.
The simple solution to changing the content of a window is to create an NSWindowController for your window, and to set its contentViewController to the desired viewController. This is particularly useful if you are following the typical pattern of storyboards and instantiate a new ViewController instance every time you switch.
However.
The NSStoryboard documentation says, quite clearly in macOS, containment (rather than transition) is the more common notion for storyboards which led me to look again at the available tools.
You could use a container view for this task, which adds a NWViewController layer instead of the NSWindowController outlined above. The solution I've gone with is to use an NSTabViewController. In the attributes inspector, set the style to 'unspecified', then select the TabView and set its style to 'tabless'.
To change tabs programatically, you set the selectedTabViewItemIndexof your TabViewController.
This solution reuses the same instance of the ViewControllers for the tab content, so that any data entered in text fields is preserved when the user switches to the other 'tab'.
Simple way with no segues involved to replace the current view controller in the same window:
if let myViewController = self.storyboard?.instantiateController(withIdentifier: "MyViewController") as? MyViewController {
self.view.window?.contentViewController = myViewController
}

How to show different views in same window in cocoa?

Is it possible to do navigation within the same window in a mac application ?(Like it is possible in ios apps).I want to show each view in the same window instead of opening different windows on a button click.
e.g When a user clicks a button then the next page should be loaded in the same window.(The next page will have nothing in common with the current page.)
You may use Tab View for easy switching between views on a same window.
UPDATE:
You may also customize your tab view , make it tabless (In the attributes inspector set style to tabless) and use your buttons to switch between views.
You may take help from the following link : http://devcry.heiho.net/2012/01/nstabview-tutorial.html
OR
You may add or remove subviews from your window on button clicks, using
[[yourWindow contentView] addSubview: yourSubview]; // Add subview to window
[yourSubview removeFromSuperview]; //Remove subview
UPDATE:
Steps to swap between views using a tabless tab view.
Drag a NSTabView to your xib.
Set the no. of tabs in attribute inspector to no. of views you want.
Design each view of the tab as per your requirement.
Now in the attribute inspector of tabview, set style to tabless.
Now drag the buttons you want to use for swapping between views. Suppose Button0 and Button1 are for 1st and 2nd view of your tab view.
Create a IBOutlet for your NSTabView in your .h file. Bind it to the referencing outlet of you tabview.
IBOutLet NSTabView* tabview;
Set a IBAction for both your buttons in your .h class file.
In the button action method for button1, use
- (IBAction)button1clicked:(id)sender
{
[tab selectTabViewItemAtIndex:0];
}
Similarly in button2 action method use:
[tab selectTabViewItemAtIndex:1];
In this way you can have any no. of views and you may select any view on button click using
[tab selectTabViewItemAtIndex:(index of the view you want to load)];
In general you want to google for view swapping.
There are tons of examples out there. Some from Apple and lots elsewhere.
Much of it is very similar to iOS.
You need to read the docs a bit too.
Understand NSView and how to load views from nibs, how to create view objects in code, how to add a subview and how to remove a view.
There are many approaches to having different views for different reasons. The right approach is a combination of style, experience and what your app actually needs to do.
Cocoa includes NSBox, NSTabView, and lots of others. Those two can be configured to not display any visual indication that they are containers.
You will also need to understand at least a little about NSWindow to understand its content view (the root container of other views generally)

how to get the Bar Button Item from Split View Controller without rotating the device?

I am developering in iOS 5.1 and is pretty happy with these methods in UISplitViewControllerDelegate
splitViewController:willHideViewController:withBarButtonItem:forPopoverController
splitViewController:willShowViewController:invalidatingBarButtonItem:
however, now I notice that these two methods will be only called when the device is rotating and thus the orientation changes. What I am trying to do is to segue(replace segue) my detail view controller to another one. In the new detail view controller, I will always hide the master view controller even in landscape and therefore I need the button.
Without the delegate being called of these two methods, how can I get the button?
If you are hiding your master view controller even in landscape (by means of split view controller delegate), the splitViewController:willHideViewController:withBarButtonItem:forPopoverController: will be called, so you can safely put your code there.

XCode tabBarController with custom button navigation

I had a question previously that died out and wanted to post a different approach and see if it was possible.
I have a working application that has a UITabBarController that controls 4 distinct UIViewControllers. I am able to navigate fine through these, but a couple of the loaded views need to load others in order to perform actions.
Is it possible to have a button within a UIViewController that will replace the current view with a different one and still maintain the tab bar on the bottom? possible replacing the current view and advising either the new UIViewController or the owner tabBarController that the relationship is still the same?
I can post code and further clarify if you wish. I am VERY new to XCode so i'm not completely familiar with how everything operates as of yet.
thank you in advance,
Silver Tiger
Yes you can add new view to one existed in the tab.
For example, if your view controller in tab is of type navigation based then you can push the other view upon certain event.

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