What is the proper way to unload views in iOS 6 in a memory warning (Apple doc flaw)?

Question

In iOS 6, viewWillUnload and viewDidUnload are deprecated and UIViewControllers no longer unload views that are not visible on screen during a memory warning. The View Controller Programming Guide has an example of how to manually restore this behavior.

Here is the code sample:

- (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning
{
    [super didReceiveMemoryWarning];
    // Add code to clean up any of your own resources that are no longer necessary.
    if ([self.view window] == nil)
    {
        // Add code to preserve data stored in the views that might be
        // needed later.

        // Add code to clean up other strong references to the view in
        // the view hierarchy.
        self.view = nil;
    }
}

Below the code sample is the following note:

The next time the view property is accessed, the view is reloaded exactly as it was the first time.

There is an obvious flaw here. If a view controller that has not loaded its view receives a memory warning it will load its view in the line if ([self.view window] == nil) and then proceed to clean up and release it again. At best, this is inefficient. At worst, it makes the memory conditions worse if a complex view hierarchy and supporting data are loaded. I verified this behavior in the iOS simulator.

I can certainly code around this but seems odd for Apple docs to have such an error. Am I missing something?

Answer 1

The correct check in a view controller for the view being loaded and on screen is:

if ([self isViewLoaded] && [self.view window] == nil)

My full solution in iOS 6 to have a view controller unload views and cleanup similar to iOS 5 is the following:

// will not be called in iOS 6, see iOS docs
- (void)viewWillUnload
{
  [super viewWillUnload];
  [self my_viewWillUnload];
}

// will not be called in iOS 6, see iOS docs
- (void)viewDidUnload
{
  [super viewDidUnload];
  [self my_viewDidUnload];
}

// in iOS 6, view is no longer unloaded so do it manually
- (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning
{
  [super didReceiveMemoryWarning];
  if ([self isViewLoaded] && [self.view window] == nil) {
    [self my_viewWillUnload];
    self.view = nil;
    [self my_viewDidUnload];
  }
}

- (void)my_viewWillUnload
{
  // prepare to unload view
}

- (void)my_viewDidUnload
{
  // the view is unloaded, clean up as normal
}