Modal View Controller Won't Start in Landscape Mode

Question

I have a navigation based app that has a detail view (UIWebView) with action buttons across the bottom in a UIToolbar. I want to add 'notes' when the 'notes' button is pushed. Everything works fine when the webview is in portrait mode. I press the notes button, the modal view opens fine and works great.

The problem occurs when the webview is in landscape mode. If I press the notes button, all the code to open the modal view gets called but all I get is a white screen. One comment: If I open the modal view in portrait and then rotate the device, it rotates fine into landscape mode. It just won't open correctly in landscape mode.

I have another button that brings up the mail composer which has the identical behavior. Here is the code in my UIWebViewController:

- (IBAction)addNotes:(id)sender 
{
    NotesViewController *notesViewController;

    // create the view controller and set it as the root view of a new navigation
    // controller

    notesViewController = [[NotesViewController alloc] initWithPrimaryKey:self.record.primaryKey];
    UINavigationController *newNavigationController =  
    [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:notesViewController];

    // present the navigation controller modally

    [self presentModalViewController:newNavigationController animated:YES];
    [notesViewController release]; 
    [self.view setNeedsDisplay]; // not sure if I need this!  I was trying different things...
    [self.devotionText setNeedsDisplay]; // ditto...
    [newNavigationController release];
}

Any ideas? I've tried all sorts of different things to no avail. I just get a white screen with no navigation bar (although there is a status bar at the top).

Answer 1

Modals don't always get information about rotations, and they get their info from the status bar, which doesn't always work right. Put this in your viewWillAppear to fix: [UIApplication sharedApplication].statusBarOrientation = self.interfaceOrientation And, if you want a navigation controller inside your modal, you need to create one.

Also, you don't need the setNeedsDisplay. That only effects the current views, not the modal you are presenting.

Answer 2

Answer is here:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/10250747/1449618

Use the window's root view controller to present:

[self.view.window.rootViewController presentViewController:masterView
                                                  animated:YES
                                                completion:NULL];

Answer 3

Wow, I lost days over that issue ... but I found a solution!

I had the same problem you had: the method "presentModalViewController:animated:" only worked in portrait mode.

After a lot of trial and error, I found out that the reason was that I had several view controllers active at the same time. I implemented a navigation system which switched between different view controllers, with one parent handling the children. (I could not use UINavigationController, because I needed a different look.)

So, my root view controller had a root view object, and several child view controllers. When a child view controller was activated, its view object was added as subview to the view of the root view controller.

The "presentModalViewController" method didn't like that. However, as soon as I set the "parentViewController" property of the child view controllers, it worked!

The problem is only that "parentViewController" is a read-only property. You have to extend the UIViewController class so you can access it.

@interface UIViewController (HelperExtension)

@property (nonatomic, assign) UIViewController *parent;

@end

@implementation UIViewController (HelperExtension)

- (UIViewController *)parent
{
    return self.parentViewController;
}

- (void)setParent:(UIViewController *)parent
{
    [self setValue:parent forKey:@"_parentViewController"];
}

@end

So, whenever you add the view of a child view controller to your parent view controller, call the "setParent:" method after doing it. Then it will work!

Answer 4

Got the same issue when presenting modally a navigation controller. Be sure to have correctly implement : shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)toInterfaceOrientation
{
    BOOL shouldAutorotate = NO;
    if( isControllerMangingAllOrientations )
    {
        shouldAutorotate = YES;
    }
    else
    {
        shouldAutorotate = (toInterfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait);
    }
    return shouldAutorotate;
}

I was setting the boolean in the viewDidLoad method, not a good idea. Putting it in the initWithNibName:bundle: method is the right place.