Loading more than one UIViewController to a Container View using Stroyboards, but without push segues / UINavigationController

0
votes

In my iPad app, I have a settings screen (a UIViewController subclass). The desired behavior is to be like the iPad system settings where there is a UITableView on the left and it loads other UIViewControllers on the right depending on which cell the user taps.

I do not see how to do this WITHOUT using UINavigationController for the right pane. Having a stack on the right makes no sense. I cannot user a Split View because the settings screen is not my root controller.

I would like to be able to use view controllers that have been laid out using story board. I see in apple's documentation that I could create instances of the settings detail view controllers at run time and attach them as child views, but then I loose all of the fancy layout tools that IB provides. My design team needs to be able to open this and tweak things.

I also experimented with custom segues (subclassing UIStoryboardSegue), but that seems to have push behavior as well.

Here is a picture of what I currently have. How can I do this without navigation controller or stack behavior? enter image description here

1
iosuiviewcontrolleruistoryboarduistoryboardsegue
It looks like I can hide the UINavigationController's back button with this snippet: [self.navigationItem setHidesBackButton:YES animated:YES]; However, I'd still prefer not have a stack of view controllers. - VaporwareWolf
you want a UISplitViewController - Dan F
UISplitViewController must be the root view controller. That's not going to work. - VaporwareWolf
Instead of creating some complicated system with a container view controller, just use a UISplitViewController instead, it looks exactly like what you're trying to accomplish - Dan F
Again, my settings screen is not the ROOT view controller, which is a requirement to use UISplitViewController. - VaporwareWolf

1 Answers

0
votes

You could do this using the custom container controller api that's documented in the UIViewController class reference. Here is an example of how to do that. This code is in the controller with the container view. In IB I made the substitute controller by setting its size to "freeform" in simulated metrics, and then changed the size of the view to match the controller embedded in the container view (container is the IBOutlet to the container view).

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];
    self.initialVC = self.childViewControllers.lastObject;
    self.substituteVC = [self.storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:@"Substitute"];
    self.currentVC = self.initialVC;
}


-(IBAction)switchControllers:(UISegmentedControl *)sender {

    if (sender.selectedSegmentIndex == 0) {
        if (self.currentVC == self.substituteVC) {
            [self addChildViewController:self.initialVC];
            [self moveToNewController:self.initialVC];
        }
    }else{
        if (self.currentVC == self.initialVC) {
            [self addChildViewController:self.substituteVC];
            [self moveToNewController:self.substituteVC];
        }
    }
}


-(void)moveToNewController:(UIViewController *) newController {
    [self.currentVC willMoveToParentViewController:nil];
    
    [self transitionFromViewController:self.currentVC toViewController:newController duration:.6 options:UIViewAnimationOptionTransitionFlipFromLeft animations:^{
        [self constrainViewEqual:newController.view];
    }
     
    completion:^(BOOL finished) {
        [self.currentVC removeFromParentViewController];
        [newController didMoveToParentViewController:self];
        self.currentVC = newController;
    }];
}


-(void)constrainViewEqual:(UIView *) view {
    [view setTranslatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints:NO];
    NSLayoutConstraint *con1 = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintWithItem:self.container attribute:NSLayoutAttributeCenterX relatedBy:0 toItem:view attribute:NSLayoutAttributeCenterX multiplier:1 constant:0];
    NSLayoutConstraint *con2 = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintWithItem:self.container attribute:NSLayoutAttributeCenterY relatedBy:0 toItem:view attribute:NSLayoutAttributeCenterY multiplier:1 constant:0];
    NSLayoutConstraint *con3 = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintWithItem:self.container attribute:NSLayoutAttributeWidth relatedBy:0 toItem:view attribute:NSLayoutAttributeWidth multiplier:1 constant:0];
    NSLayoutConstraint *con4 = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintWithItem:self.container attribute:NSLayoutAttributeHeight relatedBy:0 toItem:view attribute:NSLayoutAttributeHeight multiplier:1 constant:0];
    NSArray *constraints = @[con1,con2,con3,con4];
    [self.container addConstraints:constraints];
}