I want to set the view property of a UIViewController at runtime. I have an .xib file with two views, and I want my UIViewController subclass that owns the .xib file to decide which UIView to use at runtime. I thought I could do this in loadView by just saying
if(some condition)
self.view = thisView;
else
self.view = thatView;
but that didn't work. How can I do this?
If you want to choose your view dynamically, set it inside -[UIViewController loadView]. A word of caution though: calling -[UIViewController view] will call -[UIViewController loadView] if the view hasn't been loaded yet, so if you do this:
-(void)loadView
{
self.view = [[[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero] autorelease];
self.view.backgroundColor = [UIColor redColor];
}
The second line of that method will call -loadView, and you'll get infinite recursion (which will lead to a stack overflow, and a crash). You need to setup your view, then set the .view property when you've set it up, like this:
-(void)loadView
{
UIView *newView = [[[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero] autorelease];
newView.backgroundColor = [UIColor redColor];
self.view = newView;
}
So you'll probably want to do something like this:
-(void)loadView
{
UIView *newView = nil;
if (self.theSkyIsBlue) {
newView = [[[BlueSkyView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero] autorelease];
newView.backgroundColor = [UIColor blueColor];
}
else {
newView = [[[GraySkyView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero] autorelease];
newView.backgroundColor = [UIColor grayColor];
}
self.view = newView;
}
Addendum 1 - update to show how to use a container view for different views defined in a XIB
If you want to reference other stuff in your XIB, a better approach is to use your .view as a "container view" for your other views. Set it up in -viewDidLoad, like this:
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
UIView *childView = nil;
if (someCondition) {
childView = self.blueView;
}
else {
childView = self.grayView;
}
[self.view addSubview:childView];
childView.frame = self.view.bounds;
}
Note that if you want to swap your views later on, you should make childView a property, instead of a local variable, so you can remove the old childView when inserting a new one.
Inside -(void)loadView; method is where you create your view, so there is where you want to set it conditionally ;)
