Question

I have a UISplitViewController with the master view set up like this:

UITabBarController
  Tab1:
    UINavigationController -> UIViewController -> UIViewController
  Tab2:
    UINavigationController -> UIViewController

Each of the UIViewControllers is a table view, and when the user chooses a row in the last one, an image is shown in the detail view, which contains a UIScrollView.

The tab bar Controller is the UISplitViewControllerDelegate and handles putting up the button on a toolbar at the top of the scroll view.

The problem is, I want to add code to dismiss the popover when the user makes their choice. The pointer to the popover has to be saved in the tab bar controller when the button goes up, and then used to dismiss the popover several view controllers down the line when the user makes their final selection. There doesn’t seem to be any way for the view controller that needs that pointer to get at it, without doing something gross like storing it in the App Delegate.

I don’t see other people asking this question, which leads me to believe that I’ve once again overlooked something simple. Please enlighten me!

Answer 1

It sounds like your tab bar controller is already a subclass of UITabBarController, which means that you’ve already got some custom code in there. I would suggest that the tab bar controller is the primary owner of the popover, and it is the table view controller’s responsibility to simply notify the tab bar controller that a selection has been made. The tab bar controller can respond to that message by dismissing the popover. You can take advantage of the fact that UIViewController already has a method for accessing the tab bar controller that contains a given controller.

So it would look something like this:

@interface MyTabBarController : UITabBarController
- (void)itemWasSelected;
@end

@implementation MyTabBarController {
  UIPopoverController *popover;
}

- (void)itemWasSelected {
  [popover dismissPopoverControllerAnimated:YES];
}
@end

//////////////

@implementation TableController

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tv didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)path {
  // Do whatever else you want to do
  MyTabBarController *tabController = (MyTabBarController *)self.tabBarController;
  [tabController itemWasSelected];
}

With this solution, the table controller doesn’t have to know anything about the popover; it just has to know that it’s going to be presented inside a MyTabBarController, which seems a reasonable thing for it to know.