Ios – Strange warning dismissing modal view controller

cocoa-touchiosios5ios6iphone

I'm working on iOS 6.
My application has a standard navigation controller with embedded a CustomViewController.
In this controller I create a modal view like this:

-(IBAction)presentModalList:(id)sender {
    UIStoryboard *storyboard = [UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:@"MainStoryboard" bundle:nil];
    StationsListViewController *list = [storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:@"StationsListViewController"];
    [list setStationsData: [self.stationsData allValues]];
    [self presentModalViewController:list animated:YES];
}

The modal controller show perfectly but dismissing generates a warning.
The dismiss method in this controller is:

-(IBAction)backToMap
{
    [self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
}

The warning generated is Warning:

Attempt to dismiss from view controller < UINavigationController: 0x1ed91620 > while a presentation or dismiss is in progress!

Any clues about that?

Thanks

Best Answer

I realise this is a late answer but maybe this will help someone else looking for a solution to this, here is what I did:

-(IBAction)backToMap
{
    if (![[self modalViewController] isBeingDismissed])
        [self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
}

For me, i found that line of code was being called multiple times, I couldn't find out why so this was the easiest fix.

Looks like a race condition to me...

Putting a 1+ second delay on the caller of the method that presented modal two, showModalTwo, made modal two appear every time after modal one was dismissed:

- (void)didDismissModalOne {
    [self performSelector:@selector(showModalTwo:) 
               withObject:someNumber 
               afterDelay:1.0f];
}

This confirmed a suspicion that there was some sort of race condition between the dismissal of modal one and the presentation of modal two. Putting a delay on the caller, however, is inelegant and did not guarantee that the race condition wouldn't re-appear under other circumstances.

The problem

Turns out that UIViewControllers have a public property, modalViewController, that gets set up when presentModalViewController:animated: is called and torn down when dismissModalViewControllerAnimated: is called. The catch is that it doesn't get torn down synchronously, so it's possible to create a race between removing the old value of modalViewController and setting up a new value in the following way.

Present modal one. myViewController.modalViewController now points to modal one
Dismiss modal one. Background process to tear down myViewController.modalViewController has started, but myViewController.modalViewController the still points to modal one
Present modal two, myViewController.modalViewController] now points to modal two
System callback fires, setting myViewController.modalViewController to nil, this interrupts the process of modal two animating in and the result is the user never sees it.

The race starts on step 2 and manifests on step 4.

The solution

My solution was to put a guard condition on the method that presented modal two to ensure that myViewControoler.modalViewController was nil before attempting to present modal two.

-(void)showModalTwo:(NSNumber *)aParameter {

    if (self.modalViewController) {        
            [self performSelector:@selector(showModalTwo:)
                       withObject:aParameter 
                       afterDelay:0.1f];
            return;
    }
    // You can now present the second modal safely.
}

Worked like a charm. A more elegant solution might include a timeout.

Post script

I really didn't like the polling aspect of this solution. @Nimrod suggests, in the accepted answer to this question, that you can safely initiate the presentation of modal two from the viewDidDisappear: method of modal one. I liked the sound of this event driven approach, but after doing a full implementation in my use case I confirmed that the race condition persisted when presenting modal two using a callback inside viewDidDisappear:. The only way to be absolutely sure that modal two will be presented is to poll inside the parent view controller until you're absolutely sure that self.modalViewController is nil. Then and only then is it "safe" to pop modal two.

Ios – Passing data between view controllers

This question seems to be very popular here on Stack Overflow so I thought I would try and give a better answer to help out people starting in the world of iOS like me.

I hope this answer is clear enough for people to understand and that I have not missed anything.

Passing Data Forward

Passing data forward to a view controller from another view controller. You would use this method if you wanted to pass an object/value from one view controller to another view controller that you may be pushing on to a navigation stack.

For this example, we will have ViewControllerA and ViewControllerB

To pass a BOOL value from ViewControllerA to ViewControllerB we would do the following.

in ViewControllerB.h create a property for the BOOL

 @property (nonatomic, assign) BOOL isSomethingEnabled;

in ViewControllerA you need to tell it about ViewControllerB so use an
```
 #import "ViewControllerB.h"
```

Then where you want to load the view, for example, didSelectRowAtIndex or some IBAction, you need to set the property in ViewControllerB before you push it onto the navigation stack.

    ViewControllerB *viewControllerB = [[ViewControllerB alloc] initWithNib:@"ViewControllerB" bundle:nil];
    viewControllerB.isSomethingEnabled = YES;
    [self pushViewController:viewControllerB animated:YES];

This will set isSomethingEnabled in ViewControllerB to BOOL value YES.

Passing Data Forward using Segues

If you are using Storyboards you are most likely using segues and will need this procedure to pass data forward. This is similar to the above but instead of passing the data before you push the view controller, you use a method called

-(void)prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender

So to pass a BOOL from ViewControllerA to ViewControllerB we would do the following:

in ViewControllerB.h create a property for the BOOL

 @property (nonatomic, assign) BOOL isSomethingEnabled;

in ViewControllerA you need to tell it about ViewControllerB, so use an
```
 #import "ViewControllerB.h"
```
Create the segue from ViewControllerA to ViewControllerB on the storyboard and give it an identifier. In this example we'll call it "showDetailSegue"
Next, we need to add the method to ViewControllerA that is called when any segue is performed. Because of this we need to detect which segue was called and then do something. In our example, we will check for "showDetailSegue" and if that's performed, we will pass our BOOL value to ViewControllerB
```
 -(void)prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender{
     if([segue.identifier isEqualToString:@"showDetailSegue"]){
         ViewControllerB *controller = (ViewControllerB *)segue.destinationViewController;
         controller.isSomethingEnabled = YES;
     }
 }
```

If you have your views embedded in a navigation controller, you need to change the method above slightly to the following

    -(void)prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender{
        if([segue.identifier isEqualToString:@"showDetailSegue"]){
            UINavigationController *navController = (UINavigationController *)segue.destinationViewController;
            ViewControllerB *controller = (ViewControllerB *)navController.topViewController;
            controller.isSomethingEnabled = YES;
        }
    }

This will set isSomethingEnabled in ViewControllerB to BOOL value YES.

Passing Data Back

To pass data back from ViewControllerB to ViewControllerA you need to use Protocols and Delegates or Blocks, the latter can be used as a loosely coupled mechanism for callbacks.

To do this we will make ViewControllerA a delegate of ViewControllerB. This allows ViewControllerB to send a message back to ViewControllerA enabling us to send data back.

For ViewControllerA to be a delegate of ViewControllerB it must conform to ViewControllerB's protocol which we have to specify. This tells ViewControllerA which methods it must implement.

In ViewControllerB.h, below the #import, but above @interface you specify the protocol.

 @class ViewControllerB;

 @protocol ViewControllerBDelegate <NSObject>
 - (void)addItemViewController:(ViewControllerB *)controller didFinishEnteringItem:(NSString *)item;
 @end

Next still in the ViewControllerB.h, you need to set up a delegate property and synthesize in ViewControllerB.m
```
 @property (nonatomic, weak) id <ViewControllerBDelegate> delegate;
```

In ViewControllerB we call a message on the delegate when we pop the view controller.

 NSString *itemToPassBack = @"Pass this value back to ViewControllerA";
 [self.delegate addItemViewController:self didFinishEnteringItem:itemToPassBack];

That's it for ViewControllerB. Now in ViewControllerA.h, tell ViewControllerA to import ViewControllerB and conform to its protocol.
```
 #import "ViewControllerB.h"

 @interface ViewControllerA : UIViewController <ViewControllerBDelegate>
```

In ViewControllerA.m implement the following method from our protocol

 - (void)addItemViewController:(ViewControllerB *)controller didFinishEnteringItem:(NSString *)item
 {
     NSLog(@"This was returned from ViewControllerB %@", item);
 }

Before pushing viewControllerB to navigation stack we need to tell ViewControllerB that ViewControllerA is its delegate, otherwise we will get an error.

 ViewControllerB *viewControllerB = [[ViewControllerB alloc] initWithNib:@"ViewControllerB" bundle:nil];
 viewControllerB.delegate = self
 [[self navigationController] pushViewController:viewControllerB animated:YES];

References

Using Delegation to Communicate With Other View Controllers in the View Controller Programming Guide
Delegate Pattern

NSNotification center

It's another way to pass data.

// Add an observer in controller(s) where you want to receive data
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(handleDeepLinking:) name:@"handleDeepLinking" object:nil];

-(void) handleDeepLinking:(NSNotification *) notification {
    id someObject = notification.object // Some custom object that was passed with notification fire.
}

// Post notification
id someObject;
[NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter postNotificationName:@"handleDeepLinking" object:someObject];

Passing Data back from one class to another (A class can be any controller, Network/session manager, UIView subclass or any other class)

Blocks are anonymous functions.

This example passes data from Controller B to Controller A

Define a block

@property void(^selectedVoucherBlock)(NSString *); // in ContollerA.h

Add block handler (listener)

Where you need a value (for example, you need your API response in ControllerA or you need ContorllerB data on A)

// In ContollerA.m

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];
    __unsafe_unretained typeof(self) weakSelf = self;
    self.selectedVoucherBlock = ^(NSString *voucher) {
        weakSelf->someLabel.text = voucher;
    };
}

Go to Controller B

UIStoryboard *storyboard = [UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:@"Main" bundle:nil];
ControllerB *vc = [storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:@"ControllerB"];
vc.sourceVC = self;
    [self.navigationController pushViewController:vc animated:NO];

Fire block

-(void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:
(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
    NSString *voucher = vouchersArray[indexPath.row];
    if (sourceVC.selectVoucherBlock) {
        sourceVC.selectVoucherBlock(voucher);
    }
    [self.navigationController popToViewController:sourceVC animated:YES];
}

Another Working Example for Blocks