Multiple Views within one XIB - iPhone SDK

Question

I have been spending time learning how to use the iPhone SDK. I\'ve read \"Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK\" from cover to cover and I\'ve never seen an e

Answer 1

This is a warning to anyone trying to implement landscape and portrait with two views in a single XIB (iOS 4 with Xcode 4). The primary disadvantage of having two views in a single XIB–for me–was that you can only connect a single UIOutlet object in a XIB to a single UIOutlet object in a view controller.

So, for example, if you have a XIB with a view for landscape and a view for portrait, and both views contain the same interface objects in different positions (such as a UILabel in landscape and a UILabel in portrait). It is not possible to link the UILabel in your portrait view and the UILabel object in the landscape view to a single UILabel object in the view controller at the same time.

I find this a disappointment, as the iOS UIViewController documentation (iOS 4.3) suggested that I could implement custom landscape and portrait views by switching between two views programmatically as the screen rotates.

After spending quite some time to figure out how to do this, I discovered that it is possible to have two different views attached to a single view controller, but you need to have outlets for both views. For example, in my view controller, I have two UILabel objects (one to connect to a UILabel in the portrait view; one to connect to a UILabel in the landscape view). In my code, every time I update the landscape outlet, I also update the portrait landscape.

Not very elegant, but it works, and as this is for a simple view with one screen, it won't use up too much memory to have have all the UI objects duplicated in the controller and views. I wouldn't create a project that did it that way again, but it was a good enough work-around for that project.