Question

I am using a UISplitViewController inside a UITabBarController with a plain UIViewController in the master pane of the split view and a UINavigationController in the detail pane, which itself contains a vanilla UIViewController.

I am aware that Apple advise to use split views at the root level only, however I have seen other applications (eg, Amazon- ‘Wish List’ tab) that use split views in tabs so I’m sure it’s possible.

My problem is that the delegate methods of the split view, ie. those in UISplitViewControllerDelegate do not get called, which prevents me from creating my pop-over menu when switching into Portrait mode.

The methods in question are the following –

// Called when a button should be added to a toolbar for a hidden view controller
- (void)splitViewController: (UISplitViewController*)svc willHideViewController:(UIViewController *)aViewController withBarButtonItem:(UIBarButtonItem*)barButtonItem forPopoverController: (UIPopoverController*)pc;

// Called when the view is shown again in the split view, invalidating the button and popover controller
- (void)splitViewController: (UISplitViewController*)svc willShowViewController:(UIViewController *)aViewController invalidatingBarButtonItem:(UIBarButtonItem *)barButtonItem;

// Called when the view controller is shown in a popover so the delegate can take action like hiding other popovers.
- (void)splitViewController: (UISplitViewController*)svc popoverController: (UIPopoverController*)pc willPresentViewController:(UIViewController *)aViewController;

The UISplitViewController does receive the rotation notifications.

I can get the willShowViewController method to be called if I force the status bar orientation to landscape right (or left) at the beginning of the app launch, using

 [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarOrientation:UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight];

However, the willHideViewController doesn’t get called. And I don’t want to force the app to start in landscape. If I do the same thing but force it to portrait, I don’t receive the callbacks.

I don’t understand why the split view controller is not calling it’s delegate methods when it is otherwise behaving correctly. These methods should be called from its method-

- (void)willRotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)toInterfaceOrientation duration:(NSTimeInterval)duration 

internally, and when I breakpoint inside this, I can check that the delegate is set and that it is still alive.

Been stuck on this all day! Everything else is working great and I’m very pleased that the splitview / tabbar / navbar combination is working well. I just need these notifications.

Should I perhaps just call them manually when I rotate? Seems very wrong when the `UISplitViewController’ should be doing this.

Answer 1

Solved, it has to be at either root level or a direct subview of a tabBar which also must be at root level. Annoying!