Question

I am new to iPad development (or iPhone for that matter 🙂 ) and I am building an app with a Split View Controller.

The thing is the first screen should be a single screen. I want the user to write user/pass data to connect to a remote server, and there’s not really anything to show in the master view.

I know I can return YES in the splitViewController:shouldHideViewController:inOrientation:, and that works fine for the first screen, but I’d like to get the two views when the user taps the login button and the credentials are validated.

I can put some condition in shouldHideViewController and that shows the two views in the second screen and only the detail in the first, but shouldHideViewController is only called if I rotate my iPad, not when I perform the segue.

Do you have any tips to do this? Should I change my UI approach to something else? Any suggestions are welcome.

Answer 1

starting from scratch is a good idea. You have more control over whats going on IMO.
At your starting point you want to add your LoginViewController.

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions
{
    self.window = [[UIWindow alloc] initWithFrame:[[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds]];
    self.loginController = [[LoginViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"LoginViewController" bundle:nil];
    self.window.rootViewController = self.viewController;
    [self.window makeKeyAndVisible];
    return YES;
}

Later when the authentication process has finished you want to continue with SplitView, right?

- (void)continueWithSplitView {

    UINavigationController *leftNav = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:self.masterViewController];
    UINavigationController *rightNav = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:self.detailViewController];

    self.splitViewController.viewControllers = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:leftNav, rightNav, nil];
    self.view.window.rootViewController = self.splitViewController;
}

Notice that in both methods your desired viewController is set as the rootViewController property of UIWindow. This will automatically add the view of your controller as the top level view in UIWindow.

Furthermore make sure that you are following the MVC pattern e.g. a model object for your credentials organisation.