Responding to Display-Related Notifications

When the visibility of a view controller’s view changes, the view controller calls some built-in methods to notify subclasses of the changes. You can override these methods to override how your subclass reacts to the change. For example, you can use these notifications to change the color and orientation of the status bar so that it matches the presentation style of the view that is about to be displayed.

Responding When a View Appears

Figure 5-1 shows the sequence of events that occurs when a view controller’s view is added to a window’s view hierarchy. The viewWillAppear: and viewDidAppear: methods give subclasses a chance to perform any additional actions related to the appearance of the view.

Figure 5-1  Responding to the appearance of a view

Responding When a View Disappears

Figure 5-2 shows the sequence of events that occurs when a view is removed from its window. When the view controller detects that its view is about to be removed or hidden, it calls the viewWillDisappear: and viewDidDisappear: methods to give subclasses a chance to perform any relevant tasks.

Figure 5-2  Responding to the disappearance of a view

Determining Why a View’s Appearance Changed

Occasionally, it can be useful to know why a view is appearing or disappearing. For example, you might want to know whether a view appeared because it was just added to a container or whether it appeared because some other content that obscured it was removed. This particular example often appears when using navigation controllers; your content controller’s view may appear because the view controller was just pushed onto the navigation stack or it might appear because controllers previously above it were popped from the stack.

The UIViewController class provides methods your view controller can call to determine why the appearance change occurred. Table 5-1 describes the methods and their usage. These methods can be called from inside your implementation of the viewWillAppear:, viewDidAppear:, viewWillDisappear: and viewDidDisappear: methods.

Table 5-1  Methods to call to determine why a view’s appearance changed

Method Name

Usage

isMovingFromParentViewController

You call this method inside your viewWillDisappear: and viewDidDisappear: methods to determine if the view controller’s view is being hidden because the view controller was removed from its container view controller.

isMovingToParentViewController

You call this method inside your viewWillAppear: and viewDidAppear: methods to determine if the view controller’s view is being shown because the view controller was just added to a container view controller.

isBeingPresented

You call this method inside your viewWillAppear: and viewDidAppear: methods to determine if the view controller’s view is being shown because the view controller was just presented by another view controller.

isBeingDismissed

You call this method inside your viewWillDisappear: and viewDidDisappear: methods to determine if the view controller’s view is being hidden because the view controller was just dismissed.



© 2012 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved. (Last updated: 2012-12-13)

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