Endless recursive calls to initWithCoder when instantiating xib in storyboard

Question

In order to re-use a certain subview throughout my application (which is storyboard based), I decided to build the subview as a nib, and load it in. To do this, I have done the following:

I have a UIView subclass we can call Widget. I create a corresponding xib file, set the File owner property to my new subclass, hook up the IBOutlets.

Then, in my storyboard, I have a uiview inside of a view controller, and I set its class to the Widget class I created.

Within the widget class, I override initWithCoder, and in there load the nib as follows:

-(id)initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder{
    if ((self = [super initWithCoder:aDecoder])){
        [self addSubview:[[[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"Widget" owner:self options:nil] objectAtIndex:0]];
    }
    return self;
}

The app would crash at this point, and setting a break point here revealed that initWithCoder was being called over and over again.

It seems like I have mixed two methods for using a nib in this situation, but I'm unclear as to where I went wrong. I can throw up a stack trace if necessary, but it's basically endless nested calls to the same function.

Andreas Ley Andreas Ley · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-04T22:27:40

Did you happen to set the View's "Custom Class" in your .xib file to "Widget"?

That would explain the behaviour you're seeing, because initWithCoder: is the initializer for all things loaded from a xib:

Your parent view, which contains a Widget object, is loaded from the xib
The Widget's initWithCoder: method gets called, and tries to load the Widget xib
The Widget xib contains a UIView with the Custom Class "Widget", so again, a Widget object is being initialized with initWithCoder:, etc.

If that is indeed the case, all you have to do is remove the "Custom Class" entry for the UIView in your Widget's xib.

Endless recursive calls to initWithCoder when instantiating xib in storyboard

2 Answers