iPhone SDK: How to display a view controller within another?

Question

Fundamentally, what I want to do is within, for example, ViewControllerA display ViewControllerB and ViewControllerC. How would I do that?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You don't display view controllers, you display views. Having said that, you can do something like this:

UIViewController *a = ...;
UIViewController *b = ...;
[a.view addSubview:b.view];

Now, having said that, you shouldn't do it. Tons of stuff does not behave properly, because there are tons of undocumented interactions between UIView, UIWindow, and UIViewController. There is nothing in the documentation that says it won't work, but random things stop behaving properly (viewWillAppear: on the interior view's VC doesn't get called, etc).

If you need this functionality, you should file a bug with Apple.

Answer 2

The default template for a navigation view controller should do what you want assuming you want two different screens (not two different sections on the same screen). Whenever you want to change the view from the current one to another, just tell the navigation controller to push it on the stack:

[self.navigationController pushViewController:viewBoards animated:YES];

The default navigation view controller gives you a root view controller with a navigation view controller in it. It also gives you one view controller called MainWindow. Just add as many copies of MainWindow as you need to get your functionality.