Leaking views when changing rootViewController inside transitionWithView

Question

While investigating a memory leak I discovered a problem related to the technique of calling setRootViewController: inside a transition animation block:

Answer 1

I faced this issue and it annoyed me for a whole day. I've tried @Rich's obj-c solution and it turns out when I want to present another viewController after that, I will be blocked with a blank UITransitionView.

Finally, I figured out this way and it worked for me.

- (void)setRootViewController:(UIViewController *)rootViewController {
    // dismiss presented view controllers before switch rootViewController to avoid messed up view hierarchy, or even crash
    UIViewController *presentedViewController = [self findPresentedViewControllerStartingFrom:self.window.rootViewController];
    [self dismissPresentedViewController:presentedViewController completionBlock:^{
        [self.window setRootViewController:rootViewController];
    }];
}

- (void)dismissPresentedViewController:(UIViewController *)vc completionBlock:(void(^)())completionBlock {
    // if vc is presented by other view controller, dismiss it.
    if ([vc presentingViewController]) {
        __block UIViewController* nextVC = vc.presentingViewController;
        [vc dismissViewControllerAnimated:NO completion:^ {
            // if the view controller which is presenting vc is also presented by other view controller, dismiss it
            if ([nextVC presentingViewController]) {
                [self dismissPresentedViewController:nextVC completionBlock:completionBlock];
            } else {
                if (completionBlock != nil) {
                    completionBlock();
                }
            }
        }];
    } else {
        if (completionBlock != nil) {
            completionBlock();
        }
    }
}

+ (UIViewController *)findPresentedViewControllerStartingFrom:(UIViewController *)start {
    if ([start isKindOfClass:[UINavigationController class]]) {
        return [self findPresentedViewControllerStartingFrom:[(UINavigationController *)start topViewController]];
    }

    if ([start isKindOfClass:[UITabBarController class]]) {
        return [self findPresentedViewControllerStartingFrom:[(UITabBarController *)start selectedViewController]];
    }

    if (start.presentedViewController == nil || start.presentedViewController.isBeingDismissed) {
        return start;
    }

    return [self findPresentedViewControllerStartingFrom:start.presentedViewController];
}

Alright, now all you have to do is call [self setRootViewController:newViewController]; when you want to switch root view controller.