Question

In my app I have two screens – first to show a user profile, the second – to edit the profile information. They are similar. I have completed the xib file for the first screen.

What’s the best way to reuse it on second screen?

Answer 1

You should encapsulate the related elements as a custom view class. You can tackle this problem by creating views with code instead of just xibs, and I would recommend this.

But, if you would prefer to use a xib, you can create one that models the stuff you want to reuse. And then in your view controller call some code like this:

UIView* aView = [UIView alloc] initWithFrame .....];
[[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"MyReusableComponent" owner:aView options:nil];
UILabel* someLabel = aView.injectedLabel; //this is alive after loading the xib
[self.view addSubView:aView];

When you create your xib, your need to set the Files Owner to a class that will respond to the setters for the properties that will be injected. (Eg your new view class). This way you can wire up the references.

For more information, look at Apple’s examples of loading table cells from a xib – this is the same technique. When you load a xib and specify the owner, it will inject the values from the xib into the owner, in this case a custom view.