Question

What I want to do is to have my table view controller appear when the user presses a tab bar item, and when the user presses a cell in the table I want to switch to a nav controller while retaining the tab bar controller.

So far I’ve been testing my table view in my tab bar controller with a test UIViewController class and trying to switch to that.

I’ve added the following to my table view delegate method:

test *newTest = [[test alloc] init];
[self.view insertSubview:newTest.view atIndex:0];

It just overlaps the nib onto what I already have. I suspect I must clear my existing table view? Also, can I use this method with a UINavigationController?

I would like to add that initially I had a navigation controller with the table controllers within. However, the first table controller I did not want the top navigation bar. I only wanted a top bar until the person drilled down to the second level.

Answer 1

Put your table VC back in your navigation stack as the root controller, but add these lines to have the navigation bar hide:

-(void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {
  [super viewWillAppear:animated];
  [self setNavigationBarHidden:YES animated:animated];
  /* ...your existing code... */
}

-(void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated {
  [super viewWillDisappear:animated];
  [self setNavigationBarHidden:NO animated:animated];
  /* ...your existing code... */
}

You may need to put one or the other of these in the viewDidAppear:/viewDidDisappear: methods if the animation looks awkward or happens at the wrong time.

Also, as far as showing/hiding the tab bar goes, check out the hidesBottomBarWhenPushed field on UIViewController.