UITextFieldDelegate in containing View Controller

Question

I have implemented a container view in my UIViewController then placed a UITableViewController within it. This table contains static rows that contain a couple UITextFields. Now I have would like to detect when the user presses the return key on the keyboard when one of those text field's is the first responder - in the containing view controller not the table view controller. Is this possible, or is it only possible to know that in the controller the object exists in?

I attempted to do this but textFieldShouldReturn is not called. I conform to UITextFieldDelegate in the view controller's .h file, I implemented textFieldShouldReturn, and in order to set the delegate for the text fields I get a reference to the container view in prepareForSegue then set the delegate for those text fields to self. (I made them public so they can be accessed in the containing controller.)

- (void)prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender {
    if ([segue.identifier isEqualToString:@"Show Container View"]) {
        if ([segue.destinationViewController isKindOfClass:[ContainerTableViewController class]]) {
            self.ctvc = segue.destinationViewController;
            self.ctvc.firstTextField.delegate = self;
            self.ctvc.secondTextField.delegate = self;
        }
    }
}

Why isn't textFieldShouldReturn called when I hit return on the keyboard?

Answer 1

Why isn't textFieldShouldReturn called when I hit return on the keyboard?

Because you are not the delegate of the text field. That, in turn, is because you are setting the delegate too soon. You are saying:

self.ctvc.firstTextField.delegate = self;
self.ctvc.secondTextField.delegate = self;

But you are saying it in prepareForSegue. At that time, ctvc has not loaded its view yet, and firstTextField and secondTextField are still both nil. So your code here has no effect.