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Introduction

For iOS applications, view controllers provide a vital link between an application’s data and visual appearance. View controllers are traditional controller objects in the Model-View-Controller design paradigm but they also provide much more. In iOS applications, view controllers provide much of the logic needed to manage basic application behaviors. For example, view controllers manage the presentation and removal of content from the screen and they manage the reorientation of views in response to device orientation changes.

Who Should Read This Document?

Understanding when and how to use view controllers is crucial to the design of iOS applications. View controllers provide fundamental infrastructure that makes it easier for you to implement your applications and ensures that your applications behave consistently with the platform’s interface guidelines. Of course, the basic features provided by view controllers can only go so far. At some point, your custom code must take over to present your custom content. This document shows you what behaviors view controllers provide and where you can customize those behaviors to suit your own needs.

Important: The contents of this document apply to iOS applications only. Although Mac OS X applications also support a type of view controller, they do so using a different class that has different requirements and behaviors.

Prerequisites

Before you start reading this document, you should have at least a fundamental understanding of the following Cocoa concepts:

Developers who are new to Cocoa and Objective-C can get information about all of these topics in Cocoa Fundamentals Guide.

Development of iOS applications requires an Intel-based Macintosh computer running Mac OS X v10.5 or later. You must also download and install the iPhone SDK. For information about how to get the iPhone SDK, go to http://developer.apple.com/iphone/.

Organization of This Document

This document contains the following chapters:

Providing Feedback

If you have feedback about the documentation, you can provide it using the built-in feedback form at the bottom of every page.

If you encounter bugs in Apple software or documentation, you are encouraged to report them to Apple. You can also file enhancement requests to indicate features you would like to see in future revisions of a product or document. To file bugs or enhancement requests, go to the Bug Reporting page of the Apple Developer website:

http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/

To file bugs, you must be registered as an Apple Developer. You can obtain a login name for free by following the instructions on the Apple Developer Registration page.

See Also

For additional information about application design, see iOS Application Programming Guide and iPhone Human Interface Guidelines.

For information about the view controller classes discussed in this document, see UIKit Framework Reference.




Last updated: 2010-07-08

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