Implementing a Table View in a Tab Bar Controller?

Question

I'm starting out with learning Table Views. My applications uses a Tab Bar Controller and all the tabs are simple views. I want to add another tab, and in this tab I'm trying to implement a Table style navigation controller. From what i'm reading these views need a UINavigation Controller as the Root View Controller however my tab bar controller is already set a my Root View Controller, so i'm kinda confused.

Can someone explain what I should be doing to implement something like this.

Answer 1

This is a good question and one that most developers new to Cocoa always struggle with. You need to think about the architecture of your App to see what will make most sense to your requirements, but in most cases you will want the TabBarController to be the main/root controller serving the other views, and then from there configure the tabItem views based on what data you need to display.

For your particular case, when you are creating a new tab item, instead of serving a UIViewController to that tabItem view, you want to use a navigation controller. Then, under the navigation controller, you will be able to assign its root view controller, which should be an instance of UITableViewController (or a UIViewController with a UITableView instance if you need more than a UITableView in your view).

So the hierarchy goes a bit like this

1 -- TabBarController

1.1 -----NavigationController

1.1.1 -------UITableViewController

1.1.1 -------Other views on your nav Controller stack

1.2 -----Any other views on your tabBarController

And here's a good video tutorial that will help you with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBnPfAtswgw

Good luck, Rog

Answer 2

First of all table views do not need necessarily to be embedded in navigation controllers. Most of the time they are, but this is not a requirement.

To add a table view you would create a UITableViewController (or a generic UIViewController with a UITableView embedded in it, this depends on your needs) and put it in your UITabBarController viewControllers property. For example:

UIViewController *vc1 = [[FirstViewController alloc] init];
UIViewController *vc2 = [[SecondsViewController alloc] init];
UITableViewController *tableVC = [[UITableViewController alloc] init];
tabBarController.viewControllers = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:vc1, vc2, tableVC, nil];

Of course, above view controllers should be concrete subclasses so you can implement your custom views and logic.