Broken UISearchBar animation embedded in NavigationItem

Question

I am experiencing a problem with the new way of adding search bar to the navigation item.

As you can see in the picture below, there are two UIViewControllers one after the other, and both have the search bar. The problem is the animation, which is ugly when search bar is visible on the first view controller but not on the second one. The area occupied by the search bar stays on the screen and suddenly disappears.

The code is very basic (no other changes in the project were made):

(I write primarily in C#, so there might be errors in this code.)

ViewController.swift:

import UIKit

class ViewController: UITableViewController, UISearchResultsUpdating {

override func loadView() {
    super.loadView()

    definesPresentationContext = true;

    navigationController?.navigationBar.prefersLargeTitles = true;
    navigationItem.largeTitleDisplayMode = .automatic;
    navigationItem.title = "VC"

    tableView.insetsContentViewsToSafeArea = true;
    tableView.dataSource = self;

    refreshControl = UIRefreshControl();
    refreshControl?.addTarget(self, action: #selector(ViewController.handleRefresh(_:)), for: UIControlEvents.valueChanged)
    tableView.refreshControl = refreshControl;

    let stvc = UITableViewController();
    stvc.tableView.dataSource = self;

    let sc = UISearchController(searchResultsController: stvc);
    sc.searchResultsUpdater = self;
    navigationItem.searchController = sc;
}

override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
    var cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: "cell1");
    if (cell == nil) {
        cell = UITableViewCell(style: .default, reuseIdentifier: "cell1");
    }
    cell?.textLabel?.text = "cell " + String(indexPath.row);
    return cell!;
}

override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
    return 20;
}

override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, didSelectRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) {
    let vc = ViewController();
    navigationController?.pushViewController(vc, animated: true);
}

@objc func handleRefresh(_ refreshControl: UIRefreshControl) {
    DispatchQueue.main.asyncAfter(deadline: .now() + .seconds(2), execute: {
        refreshControl.endRefreshing();
    })
}

func updateSearchResults(for searchController: UISearchController) {
}
}

AppDelegate.swift:

import UIKit

@UIApplicationMain
class AppDelegate: UIResponder, UIApplicationDelegate {

var window: UIWindow?

func application(_ application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplicationLaunchOptionsKey: Any]?) -> Bool {

    window = UIWindow(frame: UIScreen.main.bounds);
    window?.rootViewController = UINavigationController(rootViewController: ViewController());
    window?.makeKeyAndVisible();

    UINavigationBar.appearance().barTintColor = UIColor.red;

    return true
}
}

Ideas?

Answer 1

It looks like Apple still needs to iron out the use of the UISearchBar in the new large title style. If the UIViewController you push to doesn't have its navigationItem.searchController set, the animation works fine. When navigating between two instances of UIViewController that both have a searchController set, you get the issue you describe where the height of the navigation bar jumps.

You can solve (work around) the problem by creating the UISearchController every time viewDidAppear gets called (instead of creating it in loadView) and setting navigationItem.searchController to nil on viewDidDisappear.

override func viewDidAppear(_ animated: Bool) {
    super.viewDidAppear(animated)

    DispatchQueue.main.async {
        let stvc = UITableViewController()
        stvc.tableView.dataSource = self

        let sc = UISearchController(searchResultsController: stvc)
        sc.searchResultsUpdater = self
        self.navigationItem.searchController = sc
    }
}

override func viewDidDisappear(_ animated: Bool) {
    super.viewDidDisappear(animated)

    self.navigationItem.searchController = nil
}

The reason for the asynchronous dispatch is that when setting the navigationItem.searchController inline in the viewDidAppear method, an exception is raised:

Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: 'Only one palette with a top boundary edge can be active outside of a transition. Current active palette is <_UINavigationControllerManagedSearchPalette: 0x7fad67117e80; frame = (0 116; 414 0); layer = <CALayer: 0x60400002c8e0>>'

I know this is only a work around, but hopefully this will help you for now, until Apple solves the issue with navigating between two view controllers that both have a UISearchController set on their navigationItem.