Question

I have an iPhone project that starts out with a standard UIView based Window… when the user clicks a button its suppose to launch into a new view with a UITabBarController — similar to the way the iTunes Connect app behaves after you login. There are no sample code examples in the Apple documentation doing what I want but I know its possible because Apple has done it in their own apps (another example is the MobileMe iDisk app for iPhone).

I already tried the standard -presentModalViewController:animated: method and that did not work because there isn’t a view that I can attach within the UITabBarController.

Next I am going to attempt to work with two window XIBs within the App Delegate to see if I can get that approach to work instead.

I would appreciate any insight if you know how to answer this little problem of mine. =)

Answer 1

What I ended up doing is this:

In my App Delegate, I have the following in my interface:

@interface myAppDelegate : NSObject <UIApplicationDelegate> {
    UIWindow * window;
    LauncherViewController * startup;
    UITabBarController * tabs;
}
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window;
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet LauncherViewController * startup;
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UITabBarController * tabs;
@end

In my implementation file, I add the following to the app start up function:

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application 
        didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {
    // Override point for customization after application launch.

    [self.window addSubview:self.startup.view];
    [self.window makeKeyAndVisible];

    NSNotificationCenter * notifier = [NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter];

    [notifier addObserver:self
                 selector:@selector(launch)
                     name:MyAppLoginInitializedNotification
                   object:nil];

    [notifier addObserver:self
                 selector:@selector(logout)
                     name:MyAppLogoutNotification
                   object:nil];

    return YES;
}

- (void) launch {
    [self.startup.view removeFromSuperview];
    [self.window addSubview:tabs.view];
    [self.window makeKeyWindow];
}

- (void) logout {
    [self.tabs.view removeFromSuperview];
    [self.window addSubview:startup.view];
    [self.window makeKeyWindow];
}

My main XIB contains both the standard UIViewController defined as LauncherViewController as well as a generic UITabBarController. As soon as my main launcher controller authentices the user credentials and sends the MyAppLoginInitializedNotification, the app delegate switches from the launcher to the tab view enabling me to continue on with my app logic.