Question

I’m currently designing a small application in which I have:
– 1 menu (graphic buttons)
– 1 content (basically a view) to display as a popover for each buttons

The user touch an UIButton, a content designed with Interface Builder (and driven by its own view controller) is shown into an UIPopoverController.
The user switches some UISwitch, slides some UISliders, then dismiss the UIPopoverController by clicking outside (or on the close UIButton of the content of the considered UIPopoverController)

If the user touches the same button, of course, the UIPopoverController appears, with the previous values freshly modified

Question 1:
Where to store data (at runtime I mean) ?
Because, each nicely prepared content UI has its own view controller, the more natural way could be to put them there. BUT dismissing the UIPopoverController dismisses data too…

Question 2:
How can I have my UIPopoverController pulling the freshest data (from the previous user or logic changes) ?

Any leads about best practices would be appreciated

Answer 1

What it sounds like you should do is have the main view controller that is responsible for showing the popovers store the data. Some things that should help:

• In your main view controller, implement the UIPopoverControllerDelegate Protocol and have it be the delegate of the popover.
• Implement some properties on the view controllers that allow you to get and set the values for them (the state of the switches, the values of the sliders, etc.)
• When the popover controller is about to dismiss (implement the - (BOOL)popoverControllerShouldDismissPopover:(UIPopoverController *)popoverController delegate method), grab the data you want to save from the navigation controller inside the popover.
• Before a popover is shown, set all the properties on the view controller, that way it will have the most recent data.