Question

After a litte hunting through the docs I have decided on the following technique using “viewWithTag” to extract sub views from the main root view returned by loadNibNamed:owner:options: To start with I was a little confused as I assumed loadNibNamed:owner:options would return an array containing all my UI items (i.e. labels, buttons etc.) when in fact it seems to return the root view (or root views). Can anyone confirm that I am doing this right, I am just curious if there are other (maybe better) ways to extract and set items from within a xib file?

- (void)loadView {
    NSLog(@"HYBRID UI: %s", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__);
    NSArray *nibArchive = [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"Interface" owner:self options:nil];
    NSLog(@"SIZE: %d ARRAY: %@", [nibArchive count], nibArchive);

    // UIView
    UIView *nibView = [nibArchive lastObject];
    [nibView setFrame:[[UIScreen mainScreen] applicationFrame]];
    NSLog(@"FRAME: %@", NSStringFromCGRect([nibView frame]));
    [self setView: nibView];

    // UILabel
    UILabel *nibLabel = (UILabel *)[nibView viewWithTag:101];
    [nibLabel setText:@"FRINGE"];
    [nibLabel setTextColor:[UIColor whiteColor]];

    // UIImageView
    UIImageView *nibImageView = (UIImageView *)[nibView viewWithTag:102];
    [nibImageView setBackgroundColor:[UIColor whiteColor]];
}

cheers gary

Answer 1

loadNibNamed:owner:options: does return an array of all root objects in the NIB. To get to other objects in the hierarchy, you can traverse the hierarchy manually (not a good idea in most cases), use tags as you did or use outlets.

If you declare outlets in your view controller for the view, the label and the image view and connect them in the NIB to the appropriate objects, they will be automatically connected in loadNibNamed:owner:options:.

PS: Why do you load the NIB manually anyway? Can’t you init your view controller with initWithNibName:bundle and do the rest of the initialization in viewDidLoad?