Question

I don’t like the UINavigationController because the tree/drill-down navigation style does not work in all situations. What I’m looking for is a sort of UISwitchController where a view controller can tell the UISwitchController what the next view is and the data to pass to it. Then the current view closes itself and the UISwitchController would handle opening the next view and passing in the data from the previous view. The UISwitchController could remember the name/type of the last view opened so the current view could tell who opened it (also allows the UISwitchController to handle a Back request by the current view without the current view specifying the name of the view that opened it). A view could also flag the UISwitchController to keep it in memory and not to release it after it closes so the view controller is essential reused for each call to that view. Is there such an framework?

Answer 1

So basically you are talking of a UIViewController that holds several UIView(Controller)s and handles the presentation.

In iOS < 5 I would just use a UIViewController, that adds views to another view, that is displayed.

in iOS 5+ you should familiarize yourself with UIViewController Containment, that is actually a pattern of how to use UIViewControllers with other child view controllers.

form the UIViewController doc

Implementing a Container View Controller

In iOS 5.0 and later, custom UIViewController subclasses can also act
as container view controllers. A container view controller manages the
presentation of content of other view controllers it owns, also known
as its child view controllers. A child’s view can be presented as-is
or in conjunction with views owned by the container view controller.

Your container view controller subclass should declare a public
interface to associate its children. The nature of these methods is up
to you and depends on the semantics of the container you are creating.
You need to decide how many children can be displayed by your view
controller at once, when those children are displayed, and where they
appear in your view controller’s view hierarchy. Your view controller
class defines what relationships, if any, are shared by the children.
By establishing a clean public interface for your container, you
ensure that children use its capabilities logically, without accessing
too many private details about how your container implements the
behavior.

• Session 102 – Implementing UIViewController Containment — WWDC 2011