UISegmentedControl Best Practice

Question

I\'m trying to work out the \"best\" way to use a UISegmentedControl for an iPhone application. I\'ve read a few posts here on stackoverflow and seen a few peo

Answer 1

I've come across this requirement as well in an iPad application.

The solution I came to was to create specialized view controllers for each style of view to handle business logic relating to those views (ie. relating to each segment), and programatically add/remove them as subviews to a 'managing' controller in response to selected segment index changes.

To do this, one has to create an additional UIViewController subclass that manages UISegmentedControl changes, and adds/removes the subviews.

The code below does all this, also taking care of a few caveats/extras:

• viewWillAppear/viewWillDisappear/etc, aren't called on the subviews automatically, and need to be told via the 'managing' controller
• viewWillAppear/viewWillDisappear/etc, aren't called on 'managing' controller when it's within a navigation controller, hence the navigation controller delegate
• If you'd like to push onto a navigation stack from within a segment's subview, you need to call back on to the 'managing' view to do it, since the subview has been created outside of the navigation hierarchy, and won't have a reference to the navigation controller.
• If used within a navigation controller scenario, the back button is automatically set to the name of the segment.

Interface:

@interface SegmentManagingViewController : UIViewController  {
    UISegmentedControl    * segmentedControl;
    UIViewController      * activeViewController;
    NSArray               * segmentedViewControllers;
}

@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UISegmentedControl * segmentedControl;
@property (nonatomic, retain) UIViewController            * activeViewController;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSArray                     * segmentedViewControllers;

@end

Implementation:

@interface SegmentManagingViewController ()
- (void)didChangeSegmentControl:(UISegmentedControl *)control;
@end

@implementation SegmentManagingViewController

@synthesize segmentedControl, activeViewController, segmentedViewControllers;

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];

    UIViewController * controller1 = [[MyViewController1 alloc] initWithParentViewController:self];
    UIViewController * controller2 = [[MyViewController2 alloc] initWithParentViewController:self];
    UIViewController * controller3 = [[MyViewController3 alloc] initWithParentViewController:self];

    self.segmentedViewControllers = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:controller1, controller2, controller3, nil];
    [controller1 release];
    [controller2 release];
    [controller3 release];

    self.navigationItem.titleView = self.segmentedControl =
    [[UISegmentedControl alloc] initWithItems:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"Seg 1", @"Seg 2", @"Seg 3", nil]];
    self.segmentedControl.selectedSegmentIndex = 0;
    self.segmentedControl.segmentedControlStyle = UISegmentedControlStyleBar;

    [self.segmentedControl addTarget:self action:@selector(didChangeSegmentControl:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventValueChanged];

    [self didChangeSegmentControl:self.segmentedControl]; // kick everything off
}

- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {
    [super viewWillAppear:animated];
    [self.activeViewController viewWillAppear:animated];
}

- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated {
    [super viewDidAppear:animated];
    [self.activeViewController viewDidAppear:animated];
}

- (void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated {
    [super viewWillDisappear:animated];
    [self.activeViewController viewWillDisappear:animated];
}

- (void)viewDidDisappear:(BOOL)animated {
    [super viewDidDisappear:animated];
    [self.activeViewController viewDidDisappear:animated];
}

#pragma mark -
#pragma mark UINavigationControllerDelegate control

// Required to ensure we call viewDidAppear/viewWillAppear on ourselves (and the active view controller)
// inside of a navigation stack, since viewDidAppear/willAppear insn't invoked automatically. Without this
// selected table views don't know when to de-highlight the selected row.

- (void)navigationController:(UINavigationController *)navigationController didShowViewController:(UIViewController *)viewController animated:(BOOL)animated {
    [viewController viewDidAppear:animated];
}

- (void)navigationController:(UINavigationController *)navigationController willShowViewController:(UIViewController *)viewController animated:(BOOL)animated {
    [viewController viewWillAppear:animated];
}

#pragma mark -
#pragma mark Segment control

- (void)didChangeSegmentControl:(UISegmentedControl *)control {
    if (self.activeViewController) {
        [self.activeViewController viewWillDisappear:NO];
        [self.activeViewController.view removeFromSuperview];
        [self.activeViewController viewDidDisappear:NO];
    }

    self.activeViewController = [self.segmentedViewControllers objectAtIndex:control.selectedSegmentIndex];

    [self.activeViewController viewWillAppear:NO];
    [self.view addSubview:self.activeViewController.view];
    [self.activeViewController viewDidAppear:NO];

    NSString * segmentTitle = [control titleForSegmentAtIndex:control.selectedSegmentIndex];
    self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem  = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:segmentTitle style:UIBarButtonItemStylePlain target:nil action:nil];
}

#pragma mark -
#pragma mark Memory management

- (void)dealloc {
    self.segmentedControl = nil;
    self.segmentedViewControllers = nil;
    self.activeViewController = nil;
    [super dealloc];
}

@end

Hope this helps.