iOS view controllers

My employer asked me to get information on implementing iOS view controllers into our Unity game.

I’ve done research on how to implement one and I get that, but does anybody know all the types of view controllers and ways to modify them?

From google I’ve found out there are regular(root?), modal, popover, and navigation controllers (message controller? image pick controller? what are those?)—but I’m not sure what the differences are, etc.

Could anybody explain the different types of view controllers out there? And what they do? I wish there was a place that was like a view controller database of all the view controllers you could use. I feel like the apple documentation is spread out everywhere / hard to understand.

I want to be able to present what can be done…

This document should cover all the basics you need to know about view controllers:

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/featuredarticles/ViewControllerPGforiPhoneOS/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007457

In a nutshell, view controllers (as the name already suggests) control/respond to views and controls (buttons, labels, images, text input etc…) and UIKit gives you different view controllers that inherit from the base UIViewController that can do different kind of controls to present the views and move between different view controllers.

  • navigation controller: where you can start with a root (view controller) and push/pop other view controllers on top

  • tabbar controller: where you have different tabs each is containing a view controller

  • …etc

And some are more specific than others such as UIImagePickerController used to pick an image from images Library, Messages controller to send email…etc

if you never done iOS native dev before then then this guide should be your start:

You can always have a look at native apps examples to know all the controllers