Load view from an external xib file in storyboard

Question

I want to use a view throughout multiple viewcontrollers in a storyboard. Thus, I thought about designing the view in an external xib so changes are reflected in every viewc

Answer 1

This solution can be used even if your class does not have the same name as the XIB. For example, if you have a base view controller class controllerA which has a XIB name controllerA.xib and you subclassed this with controllerB and want to create an instance of controllerB in a storyboard, then you can:

• create the view controller in the storyboard
• set the class of the controller to the controllerB
• delete the view of the controllerB in the storyboard
• override load view in controllerA to:

*

- (void) loadView    
{
        //according to the documentation, if a nibName was passed in initWithNibName or
        //this controller was created from a storyboard (and the controller has a view), then nibname will be set
        //else it will be nil
        if (self.nibName)
        {
            //a nib was specified, respect that
            [super loadView];
        }
        else
        {
            //if no nib name, first try a nib which would have the same name as the class
            //if that fails, force to load from the base class nib
            //this is convenient for including a subclass of this controller
            //in a storyboard
            NSString *className = NSStringFromClass([self class]);
            NSString *pathToNIB = [[NSBundle bundleForClass:[self class]] pathForResource: className ofType:@"nib"];
            UINib *nib ;
            if (pathToNIB)
            {
                nib = [UINib nibWithNibName: className bundle: [NSBundle bundleForClass:[self class]]];
            }
            else
            {
                //force to load from nib so that all subclass will have the correct xib
                //this is convenient for including a subclass
                //in a storyboard
                nib = [UINib nibWithNibName: @"baseControllerXIB" bundle:[NSBundle bundleForClass:[self class]]];
            }

            self.view = [[nib instantiateWithOwner:self options:nil] objectAtIndex:0];
       }
}