CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosobjective-cuiviewcontroller
user3391344
user3391344

Reputation: 181

iOS Development: Is it necessary to change the class of the View Controller in the storyboard?

I am currently learning iOS development with Objective C. I am facing a couple of issues and I was wondering whether someone could give me some clarifications about xCode. I was reading a book on iOS and I was following it's instructions.

It was saying to create a header and an implementation file with the name test.h and test.m respectively. The test class will have UIViewController as superclass. This is all very fine...

Then, from the instructions, it says to drag out a View Controller from the object library onto the storyboard. Then, the book says:

"Now that the view controllers is in place, it’s time to set it up with the correct controller class. Select the view controller and bring up the Identity Inspector. In the Custom Class section of the inspector, change the class to test, and press Return to set it."

My question is: Is it really important to change the class of the view controller to test? Why can't I let the class remain as UIViewController? If I let the class remain as UIViewController, will the outlets and actions created on the view controller in the storyboard not be able to 'communicate' between the View Controller in the storyboard and the test.h and test.m files?

Thanks for reading

Kindest Regards

Upvotes: 1

Views: 65

Answers (2)

Arpit Dongre
Arpit Dongre

Reputation: 1713

YES, it is mandatory. In addition to other answers posted here, I would like to tell you to think over this thing:

Suppose you have more than one Class & ViewController in your demo project, how do you expect XCode to assign proper Classes to specific ViewControllers?

Upvotes: 2

Wain
Wain

Reputation: 119031

Yes, it is imperative that you set the class. Fortunately Xcode will not allow you to add outlets in the storyboard if the class set does not define them. If you don't set the correct class then the wrong class will be instantiated at runtime and your custom code will not run.

Keep in mind that the storyboard contains an archive of your design which can be unpacked and used at runtime. It doesn't work automatically and it needs to be configured properly. If, for example, you were to add outlets and actions pointing to an instance of UIViewController instead of test (whose name should start with a capital letter) then you would get an exception at runtime when the archive is unpacked and it is found that the outlets can't be connected, because UIViewController doesn't define them.

Upvotes: 4

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