Dismissing a modal view controller with Search Bar cancel button

Question

I've got a modal view controller with search bar and tableview, basically a pop-over search-box, presented using a pop-over segue. At the top it has a UISearchBar with a cancel button. I'm trying to dismiss the view controller using the cancel button on that search bar.

I tried quite a few approaches...

-(void) searchBarCancelButtonClicked:(UISearchBar *)searchBar
{
    [self dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:nil];
}

and

[self.presentingViewController dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:nil];

and delegate methods along the lines of

[self.delegate dismissModalViewController:self]

with

-(void) dismissModalViewController:(UIViewController*) viewToDismiss
{
    [viewToDismiss dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:nil];
}

I don't know whether the UISearchBar is interfering but it seemed a reasonable hypothesis. Otherwise this is a common topic and I apologise for asking a question that may well have been answered before but I've read the fm and googled till I'm blue and still no results.

Answer 1

I experienced the same thing in a UIPopoverPresentationController within which I use a UISearchController to filter a tableview.

The problem is that the first time you call dismissViewController it dismisses the UISearchController, but there are no effects on the UI, so it's easy to think nothing happened. This is the UISearchBar interfering as you mention.

A solution is to call dismissViewController twice (I don't like this), or to call searchController.dismissViewController followed by self.dismissViewController.

Swift 3 example...

if searchController.isActive {
    searchController.dismiss(animated: true, completion: { 
        self.dismiss(animated: true) 
    })
} else {
    dismiss(animated: true)
}