Determining if a UIViewController is being presented modally

Question

My application's main window contains a xib-based UITabBarController (fully configured in Interface Builder) that can also be presented modally (much like the Music.app "Add songs to playlist" modal view). The UITabBarController contains a number of UINavigationControllers which in turn contain subclassed UITableViewControllers. This is how I'm currently detecting if the subclassed UITableViewController is being presented inside a modal UITabBarController:

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];

    self.isModal = NO;

    UIViewController *child     = self;
    UIViewController *parent    = self.parentViewController;
    while (parent) {
        if (parent.modalViewController && parent.modalViewController == child) {
            self.isModal = YES;
            break;
        }
        child   = parent;
        parent  = parent.parentViewController;
    }

    if (self.isModal) {
        // modal additions, eg. Done button, navigationItem.prompt
    }
    else {
        // normal additions, eg. Now Playing button
    }
}

Is there a way to do this that doesn't involve walking up the parentViewController tree or subclassing all the intermediate view controllers to pass down the isModal state when they are initialized?

Answer 1

If you a looking for iOS 6+, this answer is deprecated and you should check Gabriele Petronella's answer

---

I answered a very similar question a while ago, where I have a function to determine whether the current controller is presented as modal or not, without the need to subclass the tab bar controller here:

Is it possible to determine whether ViewController is presented as Modal?

At the original answer there are some basic explanations on how this function works and you cancheck there if needed, but here it is

-(BOOL)isModal {

     BOOL isModal = ((self.parentViewController && self.parentViewController.modalViewController == self) || 
            //or if I have a navigation controller, check if its parent modal view controller is self navigation controller
            ( self.navigationController && self.navigationController.parentViewController && self.navigationController.parentViewController.modalViewController == self.navigationController) || 
            //or if the parent of my UITabBarController is also a UITabBarController class, then there is no way to do that, except by using a modal presentation
            [[[self tabBarController] parentViewController] isKindOfClass:[UITabBarController class]]);

    //iOS 5+
    if (!isModal && [self respondsToSelector:@selector(presentingViewController)]) {

        isModal = ((self.presentingViewController && self.presentingViewController.modalViewController == self) || 
             //or if I have a navigation controller, check if its parent modal view controller is self navigation controller
             (self.navigationController && self.navigationController.presentingViewController && self.navigationController.presentingViewController.modalViewController == self.navigationController) || 
             //or if the parent of my UITabBarController is also a UITabBarController class, then there is no way to do that, except by using a modal presentation
             [[[self tabBarController] presentingViewController] isKindOfClass:[UITabBarController class]]);

    }

    return isModal;        

}