Question

I have an TabBar application with 4 tabs. All four tabs have navigation controllers. In the settings tab i have a table with a cell for “Feedback”. When the cell is clicked a FeedBackView controller is pushed which contains a feedback form with a few fields. This has a textfield for Category. When the textfield is touched, a modal view controller (FeedBackModalView) is presented with a picker. In the viewDidLoad method of the FeedBackModalView controller I typed NSLog(@"%@", self.parentViewController). In the console it shows the parentViewController as TabBar controller. Why is that? Shouldn’t it be showing the FeedBackView controller as the parentView since I’m presenting the modal view in that controller?

I hope i was clear.

Answer 1

Using presentModalViewController with UITabBarController has some issues, and I believe the internal behavior of the method has kept changing in recent SDK versions. The bottom line is, you are supposed to use the root view controller to modally present a view controller. In case you are using tab bar interface, that becomes the UITabBarController object.

In an old version of SDK, when I presented a modal view in a view controller inside a tab bar controller the modal view did not appear in full screen, which wasn’t an expected or a documented behavior. Now a modal view seems to appear in full screen anywhere, and I wouldn’t be surprised if [self presentModalViewController:animated:] method internally checks self and if it has non-nil parentViewController property, send the message to the parent view controller (which will explain your observation).

My memory is vague and perhaps somebody has to correct me. However, I still believe it’s the straightforward thing to understand (and also maybe practice) presentModal... only works with the root view controller.