If I understand your question correctly, you are trying to return the navigation controller to the root element when it's tab bar item is selected.
To do this, set some object (e.g. your application delegate, but it can be some other object instead) to be the delegate for your UITabBarController. (If you use the application delegate, it will be the delegate for more than one thing, which is fine.) Then, implement the tabBarController:didSelectViewController:
method. In that method, tell the selected view controller (which should be a NavigationController) to return to the root view controller.
Something like this. Add this implementation to your AppDelegate.m class:
- (void)tabBarController:(UITabBarController *)tabBarController didSelectViewController:(UIViewController *)viewController {
[viewController popToRootViewControllerAnimated:NO];
}
In your .xib file, set the delegate for the TabBarController to the the AppDelegate. (If you are programmatically creating the tabBar, you'll have to do it programmatically there.)
As you suspected, trying to do this in viewWillAppear
method, or anything other method, of the view controller that live in the navigation controller is not the correct approach. It is a method to perform on the navigation controller, and detected by the delegate of the tab bar.