How do you add a "Back button" on the iPad's SplitViewController popover Navigation bar?

Question

How do you add the Navigation items on the popover (left pane) of the iPad's splitview? This is where the mailboxes/inbox/drafts part of the navigation is in the iPad's builtin email application.

Answer 1

Make the UISplitViewController’s “master” pane a UINavigationController, then just push UIViewControllers on it that have navigationItems.

Here’s a sample setup:

UIViewController *masterController = [[MyCustomMasterController alloc] init…];
[[masterController navigationItem] setTitle:@"Root"];

UINavigationController *navController =
    [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootController:masterController];

UIViewController *detailController [[MyCustomDetailController alloc] init…];

UISplitViewController *splitView = [[UISplitViewController alloc] init];
[splitView setViewControllers:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:navController,
                                                        detailController,
                                                        nil]];

And then later on:

UIViewController *subController = [[MyCustomSubController alloc] init…];
[[masterController navigationController] pushViewController:subController
                                                   animated:YES];

Pushing a new UIViewController to the UINavigationController’s stack will cause a back button titled “Root” to appear for the MyCustomMasterController view.