How to set NavigationController navigationItem title from ViewController loaded by Xib

Question

I've a UIViewController which loads it's view form a Xib file. In my AppDelegate.m I would like to initiate my rootViewController with that myViewController and I would like that the title of the navigtionItem is set by taking the NavigationBar view which is part of the Xib file of the myViewController:

MyViewController *myViewController = [[MyViewController alloc] init];
UINavigationController *navigationController = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:myViewController];

According to the documentation

Each time the top-level view controller changes, the navigation controller updates the navigation bar accordingly.

In my setup this seems not to happen or I haven't indicated that my NavigationBar view is actually the navigationBar to consider.

How can I tell the NavigationController to update it's navigationItem content (title, left and right bar buttons) according the NavigationBar view which is part of the Xib file from myViewController?

Update

My Xib layout looks like this:

I know I can set those items in code by:

self.navigationItem.titleView = ...;
self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem = ...;

But I want them do design in the Xib file of the ViewController and they should be used in the NavigationController.

Answer 1

In ViewWillAppear method in your ViewController set-

      self.navigationItem.title = @"Title name";

Also in the same way you can set self.navigationItem.leftBarButton and RightBarButton items

Answer 2

Adding a UINavigationBar view to the main UIView doesn't do what you think it does. It merely adds a navigation bar view there in the view, it does not tie into the UINavigationController.

If you use a storyboard, you can add the UINavigationItem as a child of the UIViewController. But since you are not using a storyboard, the easiest way to do it is to update the navigationItem in viewDidLoad.

---

Sidenote: Apple does not recommend using viewDidLoad to setup the navigation item. If you really want to do it the proper way, you can for example do it in the navigationItem getter.

- (UINavigationItem*)navigationItem
{
  // get super navigation item
  UINavigationItem *navItem = [super navigationItem];

  // do stuff 

  return navItem;
}