Custom UIView from Interface Builder

Question

I'm trying to keep things organized and create hierarchy of views for my app. So for instance I want to create a custom view to display some text, another custom view to display progress and then use all those views in the main view created with View-Based Application template.

I know how to create it programmatically - you create UIView subclass, implement drawRect method, place an empty UIView in Interface Builder and chance it's Class to my custom class. My problem is that I want to create those custom view's in Interface Builder instead programmatically.

So far I've created UIViewController controller with XIB file and in viewDidLoad method of view controller from the template I create that custom view controller instance and add it's view as a subview of that empty UIView added in Interface Builder (the same you would change Class in programmatic approach).

It works, but it's more of a hack for me and it's hard for me to believe that there isn't a better method where I could add those custom views in interface builder without having to implement viewDidLoad method and create controllers and add their views inside of that method.

Answer 1

This was originally a comment in Ratinho's thread, but grew too large.

Although my own experience concurs with everything mentioned here and above, there are some things that might ease your pain, or at least make things feel a little less hack-ish.

Derive all of your custom UIView classes from a common class, say EmbeddableView. Wrap all of the initWithCoder logic in this base class, using the Class identity (or an overloadable method) to determine the NIB to initialize from. This is still a hack, but your at least formalizing the interface rules and hiding the machinery.

Additionally, you could further enhance your Interface Builder experience by using "micro controller" classes that pair with your custom views to handle their delegate/action methods and bridge the gap with the main UIViewController through it's own delegation protocol. All of this can be wired together using connectors within Interface Builder.

The underlying UIViewController only needs to implement enough functionality to satisfy the "micro controller" delegation pattern.

You already have the details for adding the custom views by changing the class name and handling the nib loading. The "micro controllers" (if used) can just be NSObject derived classes added to the NIB as suggested here.

Although I've done all of these steps in isolated cases, I've never taken it all the way to this sort of formal solution, but with some planning it should be fairly reliable and robust.

Answer 2

For this to work, you have to create a plug-in for Interface Builder that uses your custom control's class. As soon as you create and install your plug-in, you will be able to add by drag and drop, instances of your view onto another window or view in Interface Builder. To learn about creating IB Plugins, see the Interface Builder Plug-In Programming Guide and the chapter on creating your own IB Palette controls from Aaron Hillegass's book, Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X.

Here is the link to the original author of the accepted answer to a similar question.