UITableView partially hidden by UITabBar

Question

I've got a UITabBarController which contains a UINavigationController. Within the visible UIViewController, I'm creating a UITableView programatically as follows:

self.voucherTableView = [[UITableView alloc] initWithFrame:[[UIScreen mainScreen] applicationFrame] style:UITableViewStylePlain];
self.voucherTableView.autoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight|UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth;

However, the UITabBar is overlapping the UITableView.

When I output the height of the [[UIScreen mainScreen] applicationFrame], it returns 460.00 whereas it should be 367.00.

In Interface Builder, I'm using the 'Simulated Metrics' which automatically sets the height of the view to 367.00.

Is there something I'm missing, no matter what I try I can't see to get the 367.00 height that I need.

As a temp fix, I've set the frame of the UITableView manually, this isn't really ideal so it would be nice to work out why this isn't working:

self.voucherTableView = [[UITableView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 320, 367) style:UITableViewStylePlain];

Answer 1

You should add the UINavigationController instance to the UITabBarController and then add a table view controller to the rootViewController property of the UINavigationController instance which should make your life a lot easier.

As a simple example of this, create an empty window-based application (the templates make this a lot more confusing than it really is).

Add your UIViewController/UITableViewController subclasses to the project then use this code as a guide to setting up your project. This code is in your AppDelegate class:

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions
{
    // create our table view controller that will display our store list    
    StoresViewController *storeListController = [[StoresViewController alloc] init];


    // create the navigation controller that will hold our store list and detail view controllers and set the store list as the root view controller
    UINavigationController *navController = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:storeListController];
    [navController.tabBarItem setTitle:@"TableView"];
    [navController.tabBarItem setImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"cart.png"]];


    // create our browser view controller    
    BrowserViewController *webBrowserController = [[BrowserViewController alloc] init];
    [webBrowserController.tabBarItem setTitle:@"WebView"];
    [webBrowserController.tabBarItem setImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"web.png"]];

    // add our view controllers to an array, which will retain them
    NSArray *viewControllers = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:navController, webBrowserController, nil];


    // release these since they are now retained
    [navController release];
    [storeListController release];
    [webBrowserController release];


    // add our array of controllers to the tab bar controller
    UITabBarController *tabBarController = [[UITabBarController alloc] init];
    [tabBarController setViewControllers:viewControllers];


    // set the tab bar controller as our root view controller    
    [self.window setRootViewController:tabBarController];


    // we can release this now since the window is retaining it
    [tabBarController release];


    [self.window makeKeyAndVisible];

    return YES;
}

In the code sample above the BrowserViewController is a subclass of UIViewController and the StoresViewController class is a subclass of UITableViewController. The UITabBarController and UINavigationController instances are created programmatically and added to the window.

By subclassing the UITableViewController class you avoid having to create a UITableView instance programmatically and get most everything you need out of the box.

When you need to push a detail view onto the UINavigationController instance's stack, you just have use something similar to this:

[self.navigationController pushViewController:YourDetailViewControllerInstance animated:YES];

This will add the detail view UIViewController subclass to the UINavigationController instance's view hierarchy for you and animate the transition.

Lots of controllers in this, but it's totally worth it and will avoid a lot of the problems you're experiencing as this method allows the views to manage resizing and take toolbars/navigation bars into account all by themselves.

Answer 2

You should use self.view.bounds rather than [[UIScreen mainScreen] applicationFrame] as the last one returns you the whole screen frame while self.view.bounds provides you with your view bounds wich seems what you are searching for.