Question

I have a UIPopoverController with two view controllers inside of it. I’m building it like so:

CommentsPopoverController *commentsPopoverController = [[CommentsPopoverController alloc] init];
self.delegate = commentsPopoverController;
commentsPopoverController.navigationItem.title = @"Comments";
UINavigationController *navController = [[UINavigationController alloc]                               initWithRootViewController:commentsPopoverController];
popover = [[UIPopoverController alloc] initWithContentViewController:navController];

Inside my commentsPopoverController I have this:

commentsViewController = [[CommentsViewController alloc] init];
commentsViewController.view.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, self.view.frame.size.width, self.view.frame.size.height);

addCommentsViewController = [[AddCommentViewController alloc] init];
addCommentsViewController.view.frame = CGRectMake(0, commentsViewController.view.bounds.size.height - 200, 320, 346);
addCommentsViewController.view.backgroundColor = [UIColor darkGrayColor];

[self.view addSubview:addCommentsViewController.view];
[self.view addSubview:commentsViewController.view];

So when I first load the popover, the addCommentsViewController is hidden by the commentsViewController. When I reveal it, it looks like this:

So far so good. The problem I’m having is that from here, when the user rotates the device or shows the keyboard or shows the keyboard THEN rotates the device things start to get out of whack. The top view controller (commentsViewController) which is a UITableView always does the right thing no matter what the orientation is or whether or not the keyboard is showing. But the bottom view controller (addCommentsViewController) doesn’t automatically change it’s origin.y to stay directly under the top view controller.

So I’ve basically had to hack the crap out of my code to keep the addCommentsViewController directly under the commentsViewController by constantly calculating the height of the top view controller so that I could adjust the bottom view controller’s origin.y. This involved dropping in NSNotifications for the keyboard’s show/hide state and for the device’s orientation and constantly recalculating. Very hackish and ugly.

So my question (finally) is: Is there an easier way of controlling these views or am I stuck hacking it the way I did?

Answer 1

To handle rotation, there are two appropriate techniques. One is that you make CommentsPopoverController‘s view a subclass of UIView that overrides layoutSubviews to lay out your two views properly. The other is that you define viewDidLayoutSubviews on CommentsPopoverController to lay out your views. If you lay out your views in either of these methods, you shouldn’t have to subscribe to rotation notifications.

As for moving your view out from under the keyboard, that is discussed in the Text, Web, and Editing Programming Guide for iOS. Part of the technique involves subscribing to keyboard will show/did hide notifications.

I assume your CommentsViewController is a subclass of UITableViewController, because UITableViewController takes care of adjusting the table view when the keyboard is hidden or shown.