Adding a UINavigationController to a tabbar application

Question

I have a three view tab bar app the second view of which I want to contain a navigation controller. in the navcontroller the first/root view will be a custom uiview containing a uitableview that when you touch a cell will push another custom uiview in to disclose details about the touched cell.

I have found the documentation on doing this but it is not making sense to me or seems to be flying over my head. The docs say that you have to create the uiviewcontroller located in the navcontroller views or at least refer to them programatically. I have been using Interface builder and have become quite comfortable using it, so doing it programatically scares me a bit.

Also, This piece of code from the documentation seems troubling:

- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application {
[window addSubview:myNavigationController.view];
 }

above taken from "ViewController Programming for iPhoneOS" apple documentation

wouldn't this load up and display the UINavigationView immediately?

one problem is I dont want to display the navView immediately. the navController/stack is a secondary tab. So how and where do I impliment my navController(right now I have it instaciated in my delegate(which I think is correct)? I've been able to load up a basic UInavigationController with a navigation bar and a blank view, --minus the custom content view, through interface builder but I'm at a loss as to how to populate the custom content views.

Hope this makes sense.

Any help would be appreciated,

Nick

Answer 1

The first thing to understand is how UINavigationController works. It pushes UIViewControllers, not views. So, when something happens in your second tab (where the UINavigationController lives) you will push a UIViewController onto the stack.

This is typically done in:

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath;

Which is part of the UITableViewDelegate Protocol.

So, when tableView:didSelectRowAtIndexPath is called, you need to figure out which UIViewController to push onto the stack. You can either load this View Controller from a nib, or create it programatically. Since you feel comfortable with IB, I would suggest loading it from a nib.

I would not worry about trivia like "where should I instantiate my UINavigationController?" right now. First, get it working. Then worry about where things "should" go.

It might be best to get the UINavigationController stuff working in a separate project, then fold it into your main project. This lets you ignore lots of little details while you focus on the Navigation Controller.