how to structure an objective-c view controller with tables and labels mixed

Question

Dear Stack overflow geniuses,

I have already done a simple tableViewController page to my app, but now I need something a bit more advanced. I have a UI setup with links, labels, text boxes, and then a table of data at the end, so far my view looks like this:

I want to add a Table underneath the text box area and have it scrollable, how exactly do I structure my view controllers and how do I pass data from controller 1 --> controller 2?

I tried changing my current UIViewController to a tableViewController but I got some kind on inconsistency exception.

So what are my choices?

1. Create two controllers, one for the main screen, and one for the table
2. Somehow fix my issue and re-use the same UIViewController
3. Something else?

Here is the loading code I have so far for the main view controller, I guess where I am stuck, is if I create an outlet from my "tableview" to this UIView, how do I call code to "fill up" the table, without creating a separate standalone view controller.

Here is my code so far:

[self.objectManager getObjectsAtPath:@"/api/workorder/GetWorkOrderDetail"
       parameters:params
       success:^(RKObjectRequestOperation *operation, RKMappingResult *mappingResult) {
       NSLog(@"It Worked");
       _workOrders = mappingResult.array;

       //paint screen
       WorkOrderBig *mainWorkOrder = [_workOrders objectAtIndex:0];


       self.lblWorkOrderId.text = mainWorkOrder.WorkOrderId;
       self.lblPO.text = mainWorkOrder.PO;
       self.lblSupervisor.text = mainWorkOrder.Supervisor;
       self.lblPriority.text = mainWorkOrder.Priority;
       self.lblStatus.text = mainWorkOrder.Status;
       self.lblReceivedDate.text = [CommonUtils GetStringFromDate:mainWorkOrder.ReceivedDate];
       self.lblDueDate.text = [CommonUtils GetStringFromDate:mainWorkOrder.DueDate];

       WorkOrderProblem *problem = [mainWorkOrder.Problems objectAtIndex:0];
       self.txtProblem.text = problem.Description;



                }
       failure:^(RKObjectRequestOperation *operation, NSError *error) {
       NSLog(@"What do you mean by 'there is no coffee?': %@", error);
                 }];

This is more of an architecture question and I can choose to do this the right way, so please suggest away at what might be the best way to proceed, Thanks!

Answer 1

It would not be unreasonable to make your current view controller conform to the UITableViewDataSource and UITableViewDelegate protocols. This would allow you to populate and respond to the table view. However, this is likely to grow your class's implementation quite a bit. If you do do this, it would be advisable to declare the conformity in a private extension at the top of your .m.

Another option would be to create a separate class that conforms to the two delegates. Then you would just maintain an instance of this class as a private member of your current controller. In your viewDidLoad: you would instantiation the class and set it as the delegate and data source of the table view.

Yet another option is to add a subclass of UITableViewController as a child controller of your current view controller.

objc.io did a great job of covering this in an article of their first issue: lighter view controllers: clean table view code.