Can I subclass a view built with Interface Builder?

Question

I have a view which I built in Interface builder with a tableview and associated outlets etc, to display a list of items. Clicking on an item brings up the detail of that item.

I now want to build a very similar view with a list of the same kinds of items and some additional controls and different behavior on cell selection. In this case, if the user clicks on the item, they will effectively be using that item as a template to create a new item. Or, they can click on a button to create a new item. Aside from this, there is a lot of logic I want to reuse from the original view - for example the items are location dependent, and there is a background thread that updates the location information.

It seems like the natural thing to do would be to subclass the original viewcontroller, and build a second view layout using IB. However, before I embark on this I'm wondering if this is possible/recommended practice? Will IB recognise the IBOutlets in the superclass and let me wire them up?

Answer 1

IB will recognise the IBOutlets defined in the superclass.

You do it all the time: The outlet for the view in UIViewController is defined in a superclass you subclass for each of your View Controllers.

Answer 2

pgb is correct. IB will recognise outlets in the superclass

As for whether subclassing the controller is a good or bad idea, I'm not sure. Apple suggests subclassing NSArrayController in order to change sorting/filtering behaviour. A view controller is different to an array controller, but I dare say that subclassing the view controller is probably the correct thing to do.