Navigation Design question
Hello all, I've run into an issue a few times and I'd like to see if someone has a good design suggestion to address my problem. Consider an iPad or iPhone application based on a UINavigationController - that displays a 'menu' button in the UINavigationBar. The navbar renders UIBarButtonItems ... which we set per the UIViewController level via the UINavigationItem which is available to us via the UIViewController. Now, I've got to render, for lack of a better term, a _global_ menu. I need the exact same button to simply stick to the upper left or right hand side of the nav bar. Consider that the button triggers the display of a UIPopoverController with a tableview which again, has _global_ style options. Specifically, and to keep the example simple, this menu has nothing to do with the child view controller. Maybe menu options include LOGOUT, or display SETTINGS or maybe there is an option to modally presents a report. How can I get this to show up - without forcing every single view controller to _know_ about this global menu, jam it into their own self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem property and be sure to register a handler from somewhere to do the right thing. What I think I _really_ want is a design wherein the view controller essentially _asks_ the navigation controller to either (a) add a very specific UIBarButtonItem to the navigation bar (which would allow the navigation controller to add the button to an array if a global button already existed) ... or (b) add a selection option - which the navigation bar could decide how to handle (create a new button, or insert into an existing menu, etc). What makes rolling my own wrappers around this difficult is that those things are set via the UINavigationItem - which is very very specific to the view controller itself - it isn't directly available to the navigation controller per se. I'm leaning towards adding something like: - (void)addBarButtonItem:(UIBarButtonItem *)barButtonItem toNavigationItem:(UINavigationItem *)navigationItem; - (void)addMenuOption:(idMenuOption)option toNavigationItem:(UINavigationItem *)navigationItem; to either a category or subclass of the UINavigationController I am using to handle the case where I want to _add_ my requirements to whatever the UINavigationController is already displaying ... the problem is, if a view controller has _nothing_ to add to the nav bar, the global menu addition wouldn't get triggered I wonder if I need to shift my focus to the UINavigationBar itself -- and intercept calls trying to create buttons ... but that be new territory for me as I've always just depended on the meta-informational style of using the view controller's UINavigationItem. Any thoughts on this? Has anyone discovered a better way to do this without cluttering up every child view controller's SRP with the necessity to set buttons for someone else while retaining ultimate flexibility to set their own -- while still not having a way to 'insert' an option into an existing partially _global_ menu that is floating from vc to vc. I essentially don't want view controllers setting these items directly - I want them to _add_ items - not _set_ them. And I'm not sure how to do this within the design paradigm of the view controller's navigation item instance - since that just puts me at one more level of direction (someone else reads that object and then builds out the UINavigationBar accordingly). Ok - getting wordy and repetitive. Hope I've said enough to be clear what I'm trying to do. Thanks, -Luther ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Navigation Design question
You can add a category on UIViewController, do some detection and swizzle -[UIViewController viewWillAppear:] method. On Apr 14, 2014, at 5:55, Luther Baker lutherba...@gmail.com wrote: Hello all, I've run into an issue a few times and I'd like to see if someone has a good design suggestion to address my problem. Consider an iPad or iPhone application based on a UINavigationController - that displays a 'menu' button in the UINavigationBar. The navbar renders UIBarButtonItems ... which we set per the UIViewController level via the UINavigationItem which is available to us via the UIViewController. Now, I've got to render, for lack of a better term, a _global_ menu. I need the exact same button to simply stick to the upper left or right hand side of the nav bar. Consider that the button triggers the display of a UIPopoverController with a tableview which again, has _global_ style options. Specifically, and to keep the example simple, this menu has nothing to do with the child view controller. Maybe menu options include LOGOUT, or display SETTINGS or maybe there is an option to modally presents a report. How can I get this to show up - without forcing every single view controller to _know_ about this global menu, jam it into their own self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem property and be sure to register a handler from somewhere to do the right thing. What I think I _really_ want is a design wherein the view controller essentially _asks_ the navigation controller to either (a) add a very specific UIBarButtonItem to the navigation bar (which would allow the navigation controller to add the button to an array if a global button already existed) ... or (b) add a selection option - which the navigation bar could decide how to handle (create a new button, or insert into an existing menu, etc). What makes rolling my own wrappers around this difficult is that those things are set via the UINavigationItem - which is very very specific to the view controller itself - it isn't directly available to the navigation controller per se. I'm leaning towards adding something like: - (void)addBarButtonItem:(UIBarButtonItem *)barButtonItem toNavigationItem:(UINavigationItem *)navigationItem; - (void)addMenuOption:(idMenuOption)option toNavigationItem:(UINavigationItem *)navigationItem; to either a category or subclass of the UINavigationController I am using to handle the case where I want to _add_ my requirements to whatever the UINavigationController is already displaying ... the problem is, if a view controller has _nothing_ to add to the nav bar, the global menu addition wouldn't get triggered I wonder if I need to shift my focus to the UINavigationBar itself -- and intercept calls trying to create buttons ... but that be new territory for me as I've always just depended on the meta-informational style of using the view controller's UINavigationItem. Any thoughts on this? Has anyone discovered a better way to do this without cluttering up every child view controller's SRP with the necessity to set buttons for someone else while retaining ultimate flexibility to set their own -- while still not having a way to 'insert' an option into an existing partially _global_ menu that is floating from vc to vc. I essentially don't want view controllers setting these items directly - I want them to _add_ items - not _set_ them. And I'm not sure how to do this within the design paradigm of the view controller's navigation item instance - since that just puts me at one more level of direction (someone else reads that object and then builds out the UINavigationBar accordingly). Ok - getting wordy and repetitive. Hope I've said enough to be clear what I'm trying to do. Thanks, -Luther ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/xcvista%40me.com This email sent to xcvi...@me.com signature.asc Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Navigation Design question
Why not just make a common UIViewController subclass that manages the global menu button, and then subclass that class for each of the controllers that live on your navigation stack? If it contains the ivar for the UINavigationItem (marked @protected) instead of having that ivar in each of the custom controllers, then it has access to it to manage the global menu button, and the subclasses can also perform whatever custom bits are required. It also means that each of the sub-subclasses don’t need to be calling -addBarButtonItem:… or know how the global menu works. The controller class that knows about the global menu button then implements -addMenuOption: (not -addMenuOption:navigationItem:, since it already knows the navigation item) and the sub-subclasses call it to add an option. On Apr 13, 2014, at 2:55 PM, Luther Baker lutherba...@gmail.com wrote: Hello all, I've run into an issue a few times and I'd like to see if someone has a good design suggestion to address my problem. Consider an iPad or iPhone application based on a UINavigationController - that displays a 'menu' button in the UINavigationBar. The navbar renders UIBarButtonItems ... which we set per the UIViewController level via the UINavigationItem which is available to us via the UIViewController. Now, I've got to render, for lack of a better term, a _global_ menu. I need the exact same button to simply stick to the upper left or right hand side of the nav bar. Consider that the button triggers the display of a UIPopoverController with a tableview which again, has _global_ style options. Specifically, and to keep the example simple, this menu has nothing to do with the child view controller. Maybe menu options include LOGOUT, or display SETTINGS or maybe there is an option to modally presents a report. How can I get this to show up - without forcing every single view controller to _know_ about this global menu, jam it into their own self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem property and be sure to register a handler from somewhere to do the right thing. What I think I _really_ want is a design wherein the view controller essentially _asks_ the navigation controller to either (a) add a very specific UIBarButtonItem to the navigation bar (which would allow the navigation controller to add the button to an array if a global button already existed) ... or (b) add a selection option - which the navigation bar could decide how to handle (create a new button, or insert into an existing menu, etc). What makes rolling my own wrappers around this difficult is that those things are set via the UINavigationItem - which is very very specific to the view controller itself - it isn't directly available to the navigation controller per se. I'm leaning towards adding something like: - (void)addBarButtonItem:(UIBarButtonItem *)barButtonItem toNavigationItem:(UINavigationItem *)navigationItem; - (void)addMenuOption:(idMenuOption)option toNavigationItem:(UINavigationItem *)navigationItem; to either a category or subclass of the UINavigationController I am using to handle the case where I want to _add_ my requirements to whatever the UINavigationController is already displaying ... the problem is, if a view controller has _nothing_ to add to the nav bar, the global menu addition wouldn't get triggered I wonder if I need to shift my focus to the UINavigationBar itself -- and intercept calls trying to create buttons ... but that be new territory for me as I've always just depended on the meta-informational style of using the view controller's UINavigationItem. Any thoughts on this? Has anyone discovered a better way to do this without cluttering up every child view controller's SRP with the necessity to set buttons for someone else while retaining ultimate flexibility to set their own -- while still not having a way to 'insert' an option into an existing partially _global_ menu that is floating from vc to vc. I essentially don't want view controllers setting these items directly - I want them to _add_ items - not _set_ them. And I'm not sure how to do this within the design paradigm of the view controller's navigation item instance - since that just puts me at one more level of direction (someone else reads that object and then builds out the UINavigationBar accordingly). Ok - getting wordy and repetitive. Hope I've said enough to be clear what I'm trying to do. Thanks, -Luther ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/punster%40mac.com This email sent to puns...@mac.com ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list
