Given a view, how do I get its viewController?

Question

I have a pointer to a UIView. How do I access its UIViewController? [self superview] is another UIView, but not the UIViewController, right?

Answer 1

@andrey answer in one line (tested in Swift 4.1):

extension UIResponder {
    public var parentViewController: UIViewController? {
        return next as? UIViewController ?? next?.parentViewController
    }
}

usage:

 let vc: UIViewController = view.parentViewController

Answer 2

More type safe code for Swift 3.0

extension UIResponder {
    func owningViewController() -> UIViewController? {
        var nextResponser = self
        while let next = nextResponser.next {
            nextResponser = next
            if let vc = nextResponser as? UIViewController {
                return vc
            }
        }
        return nil
    }
}

Answer 3

To get reference to UIViewController having UIView, you could make extension of UIResponder (which is super class for UIView and UIViewController), which allows to go up through the responder chain and thus reaching UIViewController (otherwise returning nil).

extension UIResponder {
    func getParentViewController() -> UIViewController? {
        if self.nextResponder() is UIViewController {
            return self.nextResponder() as? UIViewController
        } else {
            if self.nextResponder() != nil {
                return (self.nextResponder()!).getParentViewController()
            }
            else {return nil}
        }
    }
}

//Swift 3
extension UIResponder {
    func getParentViewController() -> UIViewController? {
        if self.next is UIViewController {
            return self.next as? UIViewController
        } else {
            if self.next != nil {
                return (self.next!).getParentViewController()
            }
            else {return nil}
        }
    }
}

let vc = UIViewController()
let view = UIView()
vc.view.addSubview(view)
view.getParentViewController() //provide reference to vc

Answer 4

A little bit late, but here's an extension that enable you to find a responder of any type, including ViewController.

extension NSObject{
func findNext(type: AnyClass) -> Any{
    var resp = self as! UIResponder

    while !resp.isKind(of: type.self) && resp.next != nil
    {
        resp = resp.next!
    }

    return resp
  }                       
}

Answer 5

For debug purposes only, you can call _viewDelegate on views to get their view controllers. This is private API, so not safe for App Store, but for debugging it is useful.

Other useful methods:

• _viewControllerForAncestor - get the first controller that manages a view in the superview chain. (thanks n00neimp0rtant)
• _rootAncestorViewController - get the ancestor controller whose view hierarchy is set in the window currently.

Answer 6

Alas, this is impossible unless you subclass the view and provide it with an instance property or alike which stores the view controller reference inside it once the view is added to the scene...

In most cases - it is very easy to work around the original problem of this post as most view controllers are well-known entities to the programmer who was responsible for adding any subviews to the ViewController's View ;-) Which is why I guess that Apple never bothered to add that property.