UIPageViewController: how to add a non-paging toolbar or other "overlay" elements?

Question

I have implemented a PDF viewer. Currently it is a UIViewController that contains a UIPageViewController. My toolbar, some overlay elements (like quick access to certain pages of the PDF) are added to the standard UIViewController's view. However I wonder if that is required? Would it be somehow possible to inherit from UIPageViewController and have the paging effect for sub controllers and still have "floating" elements on top that won't be paged? or is the containment the way to go?

Answer 1

We should create UIPageViewController programmatically and add its view to another UIViewController's view as a subview. And the elements that we want them to be 'overlay' should be subviews of the host UIViewController.

For example, in - viewDidLoad:

UIPageViewController *pvc = // init this on your own way
pvc.dataSource = // your data source

// Set page view controller's view's frame to match host view's frame
pvc.view.frame = self.view.bounds;

// And here comes the magic
[self.view insertSubView:pvc.view belowSubview:<any subview>];

Briefly we only use UIPageViewController's view but not itself.

Hope this helps.