Tab Bar child viewWillAppear doesn't fire, adding NavigationController gives two navigation bars

Question

I'm trying to complete my first iOS application.

My storyboard layout is this:

Navigation Controller
'-> View Controller
    '->Tab Bar Controller
       |->Table View Controller
       |  '->View Controller
       '->Table View Controller
          '->View Controller

All of the views are shown with a push (not modal) so need back navigation. Problem is when I go back from the last View to the Table View, viewWillAppear doesn't fire. So I added navigation controllers:

Navigation Controller
'-> View Controller
    '->Tab Bar Controller
       |->Navigation Controller
       |  '->Table View Controller
       |     '->View Controller*
       '->Navigation Controller
          '->Table View Controller
             '->View Controller

This fixes the viewWillAppear problem, but then the tab bar still shows at the bottom and i get an extra navigation bar in the table view and final view (see below - corresponds to * above). Pressing the top "< Back" button takes me back to the very first view (wrong), pressing the second "< Back" button takes me back to the table view (correct)

Questions:

What am I doing wrong here???
When should a view have a NavigationController? Is it ok to have one for the whole storyboard or should I have more.
If I put a navigation controller after a tab bar, the bottom tab bar stays. How do I get rid of it?
Should I avoid tab bars?

UPDATE:

This is bizarre. If I recreate the story board I can narrow it down to the initial view controller / navigation controller pair. No idea what could be the issue as swapping these out for a fresh pair solves it.

Have you set the frame of first navigation controller..? Please show your code snippet. — VRAwesome
@SweetAngel It is all in storyboard. I trawled through the code to see if there was any difference between it but couldn't find one. I think the problem may have been making a NavigationItem and then later embedding in a NavigationController. — geometrikal

realtimez realtimez · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-17T04:59:57

From Apple UITabbarController Docs

You can use navigation controllers or custom view controllers as the root view controller for a tab. If the root view controller is a navigation controller, the tab bar controller makes further adjustments to the size of the displayed navigation content so that it does not overlap the tab bar.
ViewWillAppear of your TableVC should be called regardless of it embedded in navigationController.
Avoiding tab bars or not and single navigation controller for the storyboard are app design related.

Tab Bar child viewWillAppear doesn't fire, adding NavigationController gives two navigation bars

1 Answers