Monotouch UITabBarController + UINavigationController

Question

I'm getting a little lost trying to use both a UITabBarController and UINavigationController in MonoTouch.

I can create a navigation based project, and navigate using only a navigationController, fine. Or I can add a tabBarController and navigating to a couple of main screens, fine.

However, I can't seem to navigate to another without using the TabBarController if one is present. E.g, I'm doing an app that deals with "foo", so I am two views on my tabbar, FooHome, and FooSettings. How do I navigate to a new view if the user click something like "Add Foo" on the FooSettings view.

The NavigationController.PushToView doesn't seem to have any effect, and I don't want to add the view to the tabController since its nice and simple with only two items.

Should I be using this.View.AddSubView? The idea sort of sounds like a dialog box, I'm just not sure how to do it with monoTouch...

Answer 1

I was wrestling with this for hours and this post helped. Thank you so much. For those still in the dark a little, here's my code:

    public override bool FinishedLaunching (UIApplication app, NSDictionary options)
    {
        // create a new window instance based on the screen size
        window = new UIWindow (UIScreen.MainScreen.Bounds);

        var vc1 = new VideosVC ();
        var vc2 = new ScheduleVC ();
        var vc3 = new TheCastVC ();
        var vc4 = new MerchandiseVC ();

        UINavigationController uinc1 = new UINavigationController(vc1);
        UINavigationController uinc2 = new UINavigationController(vc2);
        UINavigationController uinc3 = new UINavigationController(vc3);
        UINavigationController uinc4 = new UINavigationController(vc4);

        tabBarController = new UITabBarController ();

        tabBarController.ViewControllers = new UIViewController [] {
            uinc1,
            uinc2,
            uinc3,
            uinc4,
        };

        window.RootViewController = tabBarController;

        window.MakeKeyAndVisible ();

        return true;
    }

Answer 2

Add your FooHome and FooSettings controllers to UINavigationControllers and set those navigation controllers to your tab controller.

So for example, the first tab will contain a navigation controller whose root controller is FooHome and the second tab will contain a navigation controller whose root controller is FooSettings.

When you tap on Add Foo in FooSettings, you will push the new controller inside the second tab.