Question

I am trying to create a custom sidebar navigation pane in my iPad app something like Instapaper for iPad. With the help of some excellent tutorials like the one by Scott Sherwood, I was able to create a custom sidebar and switch between the view controllers.

I implemented this using a root view controller in which I have two views – one is the tabbar view, other represents the content associated with the tab selected, something like this…

Whenever I select the tab I just add a subview to the Root View Controller, like this…

@implementation RootViewController

//
// some code here
//

#define TABBAR_WIDTH 80.0F
- (void)buttonTapped:(UIButton *)aButton
{
    UIViewController *newVC = [self.storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:@"SomeView"];
    [newVC.view setFrame:CGRectMake(TABBAR_WIDTH, 0, self.view.bounds.size.width - TABBAR_WIDTH, self.view.bounds.size.height)];
    [self addSubView:newVC.view];
}

Now what I want to do is push a new view into the Contents not based on tab selection but based on some interaction in the contents view. The way I have figured out to do this is adding another subview to the superview. In that case, however I will have to implement the pushing, popping, back buttons, animations between views all by myself.

I was wondering if I can implement this scenario using UINavigationController (so that the pushing, popping, back buttons are handled auto-magically).

Can somebody shed some light over this topic? May be even a brief overview of how this could have been implemented in Instapaper iPad app would help.

Answer 1

Here you require navigation in the container view.

So you can go with this thing:

1. Have one navigationController (alloc-init-set frame-navigation bar hidden, etc.) having your content1 view controller as root controller.
2. In Content1 view controller, on button tap event, just push your navigation controller to Content2 view controller, and do the same for pop event

Alloc – init your navigation controller in your root controller where you have your custom tab and container view in xib…

Note: Clear your container view before adding any other views.

I have already done this scenario so its working fine for me.

Hope this is what you required…

Enjoy Coding 🙂