Question

Is there a way to know if a UIViewController has been presented and dismissed modally ?

Something like:

• hasBeenPresentedModally
• hasBeenDismissedModally

thanks

Answer 1

There’s nothing built in, but a view controller could, upon receiving viewDidAppear and/or viewWillDisappear check whether it has a parentViewController, since per Apple’s documentation (emphasis added):

Parent view controllers are relevant in navigation, tab bar, and modal
view controller hierarchies. In each of these hierarchies, the parent
is the object responsible for displaying the current view controller.
If you are using a view controller as a standalone object—that is, not
as part of a view controller hierarchy—the value in this property is
nil.

If it has then it can set suitable flags for future reference.

Note that being presented modally is different from being truly modal. For example, on an iPad you might put one controller inside a UIPopoverController, so that controller isn’t presented modally, but then it might modally present another controller on top of itself. So the second controller is presented modally but isn’t itself a modal dialogue because — if the program is otherwise set up suitably — the user can just ignore the popover entirely.