Question

This is what xcode does by default: WHen you are viewing the first view in a navigation controller, the “back” button does not appear in the header. The back button only appears when you travel to another view instantiated by the first view.

I want a home button, or back button to appear while you are on the first view. Clicking on it will perform a certain action….like say change the rootviewcontroller. How can I get this button to appear and how do I override it’s behaviour only when on the first view? The behaviour of the backbutton should work as default when on any other view.

Answer 1

In your root view controller’s viewDidLoad method, initialize a UIBarButtonItem and add it to the navigation controller’s toolbar:

UIBarButtonItem *homeButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc]
                              initWithTitle:@"Home"
                              target:[AppDelegate sharedDelegate]
                              action:@selector(changeRootViewController)];
[self.navigationItem setLeftBarButton:homeButton animated:NO];

The target should be your application delegate class if you want to swap out root view controllers. Create a method in that class called changeRootViewController to perform the view controller swap.

You can change the homeButton to use an image instead of text using initWithImage:.