Question

I have looked at the sample generated by xcode when creating a new UISplitView app on the iPad along with countless other tutorials and the documentation from the apple developer site. I have not seen an example where the UISplitView used was not the root of the application. Is this even possible?

What I am trying to accomplish: I have a UITableView to start out and once an item in the list is selected I would like to display a splitview with two different sets of information that is based on the item that was selected.

I curious if this type of implementation is even possible, or just frowned upon, and why. If it is possible, how would I go about implementing and hooking up a UISplitView to behave in this way?

Edit: I’m updating this with what I have. I can now switch to my UISplitView, though the transition is not animated. What is the way to correctly switch to a UISplitView so the transition is animated?

Code for switching right now:

[appDelegate.window addSubview:appDelegate.splitViewController.view];
appDelegate.window.rootViewController = appDelegate.splitViewController; 

EDIT 2: In hopes of bumping this back up so more people see it, I have managed to switch from my navigationController to my splitViewController, but when I add the button to be able to navigate back, nothing I do makes a difference and I seem to be locked in. I tried reverse mirroring the code to switch to the splitViewController, but that had no affect, and I am completely out of ideas. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Answer 1

You should always use SplitViewController as a rootViewController: Split view controller must be root view controller

There may be some hacks around it, but when Apple have a strong recommendation and design guidance, I suggest to try to re-think your design before going against the platform -it should save you effort in the long term.