Programmatically defining a new navigation controller order/stack?

Question

I have a NavigationController that the following VC's are embedded in: VC1 -> VC2 -> VC3 -> VC4 -> VC5. My problem is that when I segue from VC5 (after editing is completed), I send you back to VC3, but I want to programmatically throw VC4 and VC5 off the stack, i.e. when the user is sent back to VC3, I want "back" in the navigationBar to take you to VC2 (and not VC5 where you really came from).

This comes up a lot in IOS, where you want to edit the model, then send them back to the tableView/Collection view, but since editing is done, you don't want the editing viewControllers in the navigation stack anymore as its too confusing of UX.

In the screenshot below, the VC on the top right is VC5:

which is segued back to the PinViewController (VC3) via self.performSegueWithIdentifier("backToPins", sender: self)

How can I do this?

Answer 1

don't use segue to come back (pop).

you should use popToViewController and pass specific viewcontroller as argument to pop that viewcontroller.

for example if you want to go on 3rd view controller out of five then you can do something like below. you can just change index from viewcontroller array to go different view controller.

let viewControllers: [UIViewController] = self.navigationController!.viewControllers as [UIViewController];
self.navigationController!.popToViewController(viewControllers[viewControllers.count - 3], animated: true);

If you are using segue that means you add (push) new viewcontroller to navigation stack. in your example your stack after reaching 5th view is like,

VC1 - VC2 - VC3 - VC4 - VC5 (top of stack)

now if you performsegue to go back to VC3 then stack should be like this,

VC1 - VC2 - VC3 - VC4 - VC5 - VC3(top of stack)

and if you pop to VC3 then your stack is like,

VC1 - VC2 - VC3 (top of stack).

so pop viewcintrollers to go back don't use segue

hope this will help :)