Question

Noobie so bear with me.

I’ve have been following the O’Rielyy Learning iPhone Programming and various threads on here to build my first iPhone App. So far so good, but the final stumbling block at the projects end is getting the App to autorotate (the beta using only uiwebviews was rejected for not auto-rotating)

I have the mail App delegate, which adds a UITabBarController

// myNewsUKDelegate.h
@interface myNewsUKDelegate : NSObject <UIApplicationDelegate, UITabBarControllerDelegate> {
    UIWindow *window;
    UITabBarController *tabBarController;
}
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window;
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UITabBarController *tabBarController;
@end

// myNewsUKDelegate.m
- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {
    // Add the tab bar controller's view to the window and display.
    [self.window addSubview:tabBarController.view];
    [self.window makeKeyAndVisible];
    return YES;
}

There is are .h and .m files for tabBarController – I added all the UINavigationControllers in IB, which in turn add a UITableView

See image at http://flatearth.co.uk/nib.png (too noob to post images in questions!)

From my reading I understand that the issue is the UITabBarController I added to the main view needs to be ‘subclassed’ and have this code added.

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation {
    return YES;
}

The next view down/in/subclassed (whatever the correct terminology is), which has .h and .m files is the FirstViewController which adds the table view, this has shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation already set.

@interface FirstViewController : UIViewController <UITableViewDataSource, UITableViewDelegate> {
    UITableView *tableView;
    NSArray *userList;
}
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UITableView *tableView;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSArray *userList;
@end

@implementation FirstViewController

@synthesize tableView;

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];
    // I tried adding
    self.view.autoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight;
    // lots of other code ; )
}

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation {
    return YES;
}

So the problem appears to be that when [self.window addSubview:tabBarController.view]; adds the tab bar it doesn’t add the shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation returning YES bit.

It appears that I need to add a tabBarController subclass, with the shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation in it. So I read up and tried this, as suggested on the interwebs…

//  tabBarController.h
#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
@interface tabBarController : UITabBarController {

}
@end

//  tabBarController.m
#import "tabBarController.h"
@implementation tabBarController
- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation {
    return YES;
}
@end

and adding

#import "tabBarController.h"

to myNewsUKDelegate.m

But that fails with “error: accessing unknown ‘view’ class method” at the

[self.window addSubview:tabBarController.view];

line in myNewsUKDelegate.m

Further searching hasn’t produced anything helpful and my recent Xcode knowledge has now ran dry : ( Any help appreciated.

Answer 1

From my reading I understand that the issue is the UITabBarController I added to the main view needs to be ‘subclassed’ and have this code added.

No, you don’t need to do that. The tab bar controller determines if it supports a specific interface orientation or not by asking all its child controllers if they support this orientation. In your case, these seem to be navigation controllers, which in turn ask their current child controller if it supports the orientation.

In other words, you have to make sure that all your custom view controllers return YES for the desired interface orientation.