Question

My goal is to notify a UITableView to refresh itself every time some configurations have changed. The problem is that the configuration view is “not” on the same view that produces the signal. (Yes, I used Tabbed Application.)

Currently I use a sort of global variable in AppDelegate for detecting the change in one view, and do the check in another view. This is fine but the code is not readable as it is so tightly coupling. Is there an elegant method for doing this? Do I miss something in this programming framework?

If there were such an elegant way, I suppose the refreshing process of UITableView should happen as soon as the notification occurs. In this case, I would like to know whether it’s possible to delay UITableView from refreshing itself until viewDidAppear occurs.

Answer 1

I would use KVO (Key Value Observing) to keep track of when it changes:

 - (void)viewDidLoad {
      [super viewDidLoad];  

      // Note that you can use the options to get the new value passed when it
      // changes if you want to update immediately.
      [configurationObject addObserver:self forKeyPath:@"configurationItem" options:0 context:nil];
 }

 - (void)viewDidUnload {
      [super viewDidUnload];
      [configurationObject removeObserver:self forKeyPath:@"configurationItem"];
 }

 // Note that I would refresh in viewWillAppear instead of viewDidAppear
 - (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {
      [super viewWillAppear:animated];
      if (self.needToRefreshData == YES) {
           [self.tableView refreshData];
      }
 }

 - (void)observeValueForKeyPath:(NSString *)keyPath ofObject:(id)object change:(NSDictionary *)change context:(void *)context {
      if (keyPath isEqualToString:@"configurationItem") {
           [self.needToRefreshData = YES];
      }
 }