Question

VC1 = NewGameViewController
VC2 = GameViewController

NewGameViewController.m

- (void)prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender
{
if( [segue.identifier isEqualToString:@"newGameSegue"]) {
    GameViewController *gameVC = (GameViewController *)segue.destinationViewController;

    NSArray *array = [self nameArrayForTextFieldArray:self.namePicker.textFieldArray withColon:YES];
    gameVC.nameArray = [[NSArray alloc] initWithArray:array];
}

-(NSArray *)nameArrayForTextFieldArray:(NSArray *)array withColon:(BOOL *)bool
basically returns an nsarray of strings given an nsarray of textfields. withcolon is a bool of whether or not you want the strings to have a colon appended to the end.

when i debug my code, the _nameArray ivar in gameVC still reads nil after every line here is called…can anyone help me out here??

Answer 1

The prepareForSegue method is invoked by UIKit when a segue from one screen to another is about to be performed. It allows us to give data to the new view controller before it will be displayed. Usually you’ll do that by setting its properties.

The new view controller can be found in segue.destinationViewController. If GameViewController embed the navigation controller, the new view controller will not be GameViewController but the navigation controller that embeds it.
To get the GameViewController object, we can look at the navigation controller’s topViewController property. This property refers to the screen that is currently active inside the navigation controller.

To send an object to the new view controller you can use this solution using performSegueWithIdentifier:

For example, if we want to perform a segue pressing a UIButton we can do this:

In the MyViewController.h we create a IBAction (connected to UIButton), dragging the button from storyboard to code:

- (IBAction)sendData:(id)sender;

In MyViewController.m we implement the method:

- (IBAction)sendData:(id)sender
{
    NSArray *array = [self nameArrayForTextFieldArray:self.namePicker.textFieldArray withColon:YES];
    [self performSegueWithIdentifier:@"newGameSegue" sender:array];
}


- (void)prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender
{
    if ([segue.identifier isEqualToString:@"newGameSegue"]) {
        UINavigationController *navigationController = segue.destinationViewController;
        GameViewController *controller = (GameViewController *)navigationController.topViewController;
        controller.nameArray = sender;
    }
}