Add subview over UITabBar showing under Tab Bar when vc popped

Question

I have a simple Tab Bar project where I add an image over the tab bar which looks good at first.

A second view is pushed form FirstViewController with hidesBottomBarWhenPushed = true. I then hide the button which was added, for good reasons, on the view and not the tabbar as a subview.

Everything ok until I press back button and when I unhide the view (or recreate it) show under the tab bar.

In what method should I put the showButton() method so it shows over the tabbar again?

Any tips?

CustomTabBarController.swift

class CustomTabBarController: UITabBarController {

    var bigButton: UIImageView!

    func addCenterButton() {
      let image = UIImage(named: "bigButtonBackground")
      bigButton = UIImageView(image: image)
      bigButton.frame = CGRectMake(0.0, 0.0, image!.size.width, image!.size.height);
      bigButton.autoresizingMask = .FlexibleRightMargin | .FlexibleLeftMargin | .FlexibleBottomMargin | .FlexibleTopMargin
      let heightDifference = image!.size.height - tabBar.frame.size.height
      var center = tabBar.center
      center.y = center.y - heightDifference/2.0
      bigButton.center = center

      view.addSubview(bigButton)   
     }

     func hideButton() {
       bigButton.hidden = true   
     }

     func showButton() {
       bigButton.hidden = false
       view.bringSubviewToFront(bigButton)  
     }
}

FirstViewController.swift

class FirstViewController: UIViewController {

  override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()
    (tabBarController as! CustomTabBarController).addCenterButton()
  }

  override func viewDidAppear(animated: Bool) {
    super.viewDidAppear(animated)
    (tabBarController as! CustomTabBarController).showButton()
  }

  override func prepareForSegue(segue: UIStoryboardSegue, sender: AnyObject?) {
    let viewController = segue.destinationViewController as! UIViewController

    (tabBarController as! CustomTabBarController).hideButton()
    viewController.hidesBottomBarWhenPushed = true
  }
}

Answer 1

I was dealing with a similar situation and ended up subclassing UITabBarController. In the subclass' viewDidLayoutSubviews method, calling bringSubviewToFront(view: UIView) and passing in the view that was going behind the tab bar fixed the issue. Make sure you call this method on the UITabBarController's view.