Programming iOS 6, 3rd Edition

Making and Loading a Nib

Let’s create our own nib-loading code, illustrating at the same time the fact that any instance can be a nib’s owner. To do so, we’ll need a second nib file in our project.

First, we’ll make the nib:

1. Choose File → New → File. The “Choose a template” dialog for files appears.
2. At the left of the dialog, under iOS (not Mac OS X!), choose User Interface, and select View in the main part of the dialog. Click Next.
3. For the Device Family pop-up menu, specify iPhone. Click Next.
4. In the Save dialog, name the file MyNib. Make sure you’re saving into the Empty Window project folder, that the group is Empty Window, and that the target is Empty Window (and checked); all those things should be true by default. Click Create.

We’ve now created a nib file, MyNib.xib, containing a single top-level nib object, a UIView. Look at MyNib.xib in the editor to see that this is true.

We’ll also need an instance to act as the nib’s owner. By the time our code will run, we will already have at least one instance we could use (the AppDelegate instance), but to illustrate the procedure fully, we’ll create our own class whose sole purpose is to be instantiated so that this instance can act as the owner of the nib file as it loads:

1. In the Empty Window project in Xcode, choose File → New → File. The “Choose a template” dialog for files appears.
2. At the left of the dialog, under iOS (not Mac OS X!), select Cocoa Touch, and select Objective-C Class in the main part of the dialog. Click Next. ...