Question

In short: I want to have two fullscreen views, where I can switch between view A and view B. I know I could just use an Tab Bar Controller, but I dont want to. I want to see how this is done by hand, for learning what’s going on under the hood.

I have an UIViewController that acts as an root controller:

@interface MyRootController : UIViewController {
    IBOutlet UIView *contentView;
}
@property(nonatomic, retain) UIView *contentView;

@end

The contentView is hooked up to an UIView which I added as an subview to the “view” of the Nib. This has green color and I see it fullscreen. Works fine.

Then, I created two other View Controllers pretty much the same way. ViewControllerA and ViewControllerB. ViewControllerA has a blue background, ViewControllerB has a black background. Just to see which one is active.

So, in the implementation of myRootController, I do this:

// Implement viewDidLoad to do additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.
- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];

    ViewControllerA *vcA = [[ViewControllerA alloc] initWithNib];
    [self.contentView addSubview:vcA.view];

    [cvA release];
}

By the way, the -initWithNib method looks like this:

- (id)initWithNib { // Load the view nib
    if (self = [super initWithNibName:@"ViewA" bundle:nil]) {
        // do ivar initialization here, if needed
    }
    return self;
}

That works. I see the view from ViewControllerA when I start the app. But now the big question is: A View Controller typically has all those methods like:

• (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated;
• (void)viewDidDisappear:(BOOL)animated;
• (void)viewDidLoad;

…and so on. Who or what, or how would those methods be called if I do it “my” way without a tab bar controller? I mean: If I allocate that ViewController’s class and the view get’s visible, would I have to take care about calling those methods? How does it know that viewWillAppear, viewDidDisappear, or viewDidLoad? I believe that the Tab Bar Controller has all this “cleverness” under the hood. Or am I wrong?

UPDATE: I’ve tested it. If I release the view controller (for example: ViewControllerA), I will get no log message on viewDidDisappear. Only when allocating and initializing the ViewControllerA, I get an viewDidLoad. But that’s it. So all signs stand for the cleverness of UITabBarController now 😉 and I have to figure out how to replicate that, right?

Answer 1

You can begin from the simplest removeFromSuperview/insertSubview and add code to it little by little.

//SwitchViewController.h
#import 
@class BlueViewController;
@class YellowViewController;

@interface SwitchViewController : UIViewController {
    IBOutlet BlueViewController *blueViewController;
    IBOutlet YellowViewController *yellowViewController;
}
- (IBAction)switchViews:(id)sender;
@property (nonatomic, retain) BlueViewController *blueViewController;
@property (nonatomic, retain) YellowViewController *yellowViewController;
@end

//1. remove yellow view and insert blue view
- (IBAction)switchViews:(id)sender {
    if(self.blueViewController.view.superview == nil)
    {
        [yellowViewController.view removeFromSuperview];
        [self.view insertSubview:blueViewController.view atIndex:0];
    }
}

//2. appear=insert, disappear=remove
if(blueViewController.view.superview == nil)
{
    [blueViewController viewWillAppear:YES];
    [yellowViewController viewWillDisappear:YES];

    [yellowViewController.view removeFromSuperview];
    [self.view insertSubview:self.blueViewController.view atIndex:0];

    [yellowViewController viewDidDisappear:YES];
    [blueViewController viewDidAppear:YES];
}

//3. now add animation
[UIView beginAnimations:@"View Flip" context:nil];
[UIView setAnimationDuration:1.25];
[UIView setAnimationCurve:UIViewAnimationCurveEaseInOut];
//blue view will appear by flipping from right
if(blueViewController.view.superview == nil)
{
    [UIView setAnimationTransition: UIViewAnimationTransitionFlipFromRight 
                            forView:self.view cache:YES];

    [blueViewController viewWillAppear:YES];
    [yellowViewController viewWillDisappear:YES];

    [yellowViewController.view removeFromSuperview];
    [self.view insertSubview:self.blueViewController.view atIndex:0];

    [yellowViewController viewDidDisappear:YES];
    [blueViewController viewDidAppear:YES];
}
[UIView commitAnimations];