Why is self.view.subviews an empty array in viewDidLoad?

Question

I've created a bunch of UI elements using Interface Builder and hooked them up to my ViewController using IBOutlets.

However, when I try to iterate through self.view.subviews in my ViewController's viewDidLoad method, I find that the subviews array is empty.

• ViewController.xib:

  UIView
  |
  - UILabel
  - UIButton
  - // ... more stuff
  - UIToolbar
  

• ViewController.m:

  #import "ViewController.h"
  @interface ViewController ()
  // Interface elements
  @property IBOutlet UILabel *titleLabel;
  @property IBOutlet UIButton *button1;
  // ... etc
  @end
  
  @implementation ViewController
  
  - (void)viewDidLoad {
      [super viewDidLoad];
  
      // BREAK_POINT
  
      // ... code to wire up the UIButtons to dynamically created objects
  }
  

• Debugger output at BREAK_POINT:

  (lldb) po self.view
  <UIView: 0x7fa7897e2140; frame = (0 0; 600 600); autoresize = W+H; layer = <CALayer: 0x7fa7897e2210>>
  
  (lldb) po self.view.subviews
  <__NSArrayI 0x7fa789713500>(
  
  )
  (lldb) po [self.view.subviews count];
   nil
  (lldb) po self.button1
  <UIButton: 0x7fa78955ea70; frame = (-23 -15; 46 30); opaque = NO; autoresize = RM+BM; layer = <CALayer: 0x7fa7897663d0>>
  

Any ideas why self.views.subviews is empty when clearly the UIButtons, etc have been initialized and wired up to the IBOutlets correctly?

---

Edit 1: I renamed "MainView.xib" to "ViewController.xib" and removed the loadView implementation in my ViewController.m, and I'm still seeing the same self.view.subviews behavior.

Answer 1

Try to do that in

- (void)viewDidLayoutSubviews{


}

This method get called after loading all the subviews. Hope this will help you :)