CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iphoneobjective-cioscocoa-touchios5
James Munnelly
James Munnelly

Reputation: 103

UINavigationController containing a UITableView, then a UITabBarController with more UITableView's

Sorry for the vague title!

I am trying to achieve the following functionality: A user is first presented with a UINavigationController containing a UITableView. When the user taps a cell in the table view, I want to push a new view which contains a UITabBarController (that'll stay visible regardless of the currently visible UIViewController) and a UITableView again, that people can again select a cell from and which will then again push to UINavigationController.

If a user selects a tab from the UITabBar, I want the first screen (without the UITabBar) to be the one that users can go back to, not the tab they just came from. Also, if a user selects one of the UITableView items on any of the tabs, I want the back button to go back to the previously displayed screen (as you'd expect with a standard UINavigationController)

I've spent hours trying to find the answer to this and I just can't anywhere! I hope I haven't been too vague or confusing in my explanation.

James.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 409

Answers (1)

XJones
XJones

Reputation: 21967

If your desired UX is confusing to explain here, imagine how your users will feel! I would reconsider the intended design.

From the View Controller Programming Guide:

An application that uses a tab bar controller can also use navigation controllers in one or more tabs. When combining these two types of view controller in the same user interface, the tab bar controller always acts as the wrapper for the navigation controllers. You never want to push a tab bar controller onto the navigation stack of a navigation controller. Doing so creates an unusual situation whereby the tab bar appears only while a specific view controller is at the top of the navigation stack. Tab bars are designed to be persistent, and so this transient approach can be confusing to users.

That said, you can probably hack something close to what you are talking about but you'll need to write a bunch of code to handle the navigation using the UITabBarControllerDelegate and UINavigationControllerDelegate methods and keep track of whatever state you need to know where you want to navigate to based on a user action. Odds are you'll end up with something complicated to code, maintain, and worse, use.

Upvotes: 1

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