UISearchController in a UIViewController

Question

I\'m looking to create similar functionality to Apple\'s maps application in Swift. Is there anyway to integrate a UISearchController in to a regular view (i.e.: not a UITab

Answer 1

I had some trouble converting from SearchDisplayController in UIViewController to SearchController in ViewController because SearchController implementation isn't so intuitive. But you can just add in searcher from SearchController itself into any view. You cannot set constraint though because the search bar would move up when you focus/select it (if you know how to set the constraint to seachController.searchbar after adding it to any view, LET ME KNOW!). Below I am sharing a checklist that I found very important/valuable when implementing SearchController in ViewController.

//you can just add searcher to any view. It would automatically move up to show the tableView like magic. But for this reason, you cannot set constraint to the search bar to the placeholder view that you are adding it to.

[self.searchBarPlaceHolderView addSubview:self.searchController.searchBar];

//you need this to prevent search bar to drop down when you focus/select it. You would want to set this to NO if you are adding searchBar to the navigation bar's titleview.

self.searchController.hidesNavigationBarDuringPresentation = YES;

//make sure you set this in your viewController

self.extendedLayoutIncludesOpaqueBars = true;
self.definesPresentationContext = YES;

// you also need to give the search controller a tableViewController that can be displayed. You can also do just self.searchResultsController = [[UITableView alloc] init] for a generic one.

self.searchResultsController = (UITableViewController *)[ [UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:@"Main" bundle:nil] instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:@"searchResultsTableViewController"];

self.searchResultsController.tableView.dataSource = self;
self.searchResultsController.tableView.delegate = self;
self.searchResultsController.definesPresentationContext = NO;
self.searchController = [[UISearchController alloc] initWithSearchResultsController:self.searchResultsController];