Question

As I understand from reading documentation, UIPopoverControllers are only supported on the iPad. Therefore if you try to declare a variable as a UIPopoverController and run the app in the iPhone simulator or on an iPhone, you get an error such as:

UIPopoverController initWithContentViewController:] called when not running under UIUserInterfaceIdiomPad

So I have a universal monotouch app I am trying out, where I would like to use a UIPopoverController when the user is using an iPad, for the iPhone I have another solution.

This is how I am declaring it at the moment, but obviously running on the iPhone does not work, and I get the above error message.

public partial class IOPSCalculatorViewController : UIViewController
{

    static bool UserInterfaceIdiomIsPhone {
        get { return UIDevice.CurrentDevice.UserInterfaceIdiom == UIUserInterfaceIdiom.Phone; }
    }

    static bool UserInterfaceIdiomIsIPAD {
        get { return UIDevice.CurrentDevice.UserInterfaceIdiom == UIUserInterfaceIdiom.Pad; }
    }

    UIPopoverController DetailViewPopover = new UIPopoverController(new PopoverContentViewController());
}

How can I only declare the:

UIPopoverController DetailViewPopover = new UIPopoverController(new PopoverContentViewController());

part if the device is an iPad? I need the UIPopoverController to be in the public partial class so that I can access it publically in other places.

Answer 1

Instead of declaring and allocating in one line just split it in two lines. E.g.

UIPopoverController DetailViewPopover = null;

if (IOPSCalculatorViewController.UserInterfaceIdiomIsIPAD) {
    DetailViewPopover = new UIPopoverController (new PopoverContentViewController ());
}

That will also work if DetailViewPopover is a (public) field instead of an instance variable and, as long as the UIPopoverController constructor is not invoked, you won’t be getting the error.