Problems with UINavigationController nested within moreViewController

Question

I have UITabbarMoreController which contains a few UINavigationControllers. These UINavigationControllers then contain my custom view controllers.

So the hierarchy looks something like this:

UITabbarController
 - UINavigationController
  -> my custom UIViewController
 - ...(other children of UITabbarController look the same)

From within my custom view controller I call [self parentViewController] which should return a UINavigationController. And this really happens, I really do get a UINavigationController, BUT only when the particular UINavigationController is NOT inside moreNavigationController.

Since I have many children controllers in the tabbar controller, the tabbar controller creates a moreNavigationController. If I open a viewcontroller that is under moreNavigationController and call [self parentViewController] it returns a mysterious object with class UIMoreNavigationController

I really need to get the UINavigationController that is parent of my view controller, not the UIMoreNavigationController. Also, I tried using [self navigationController] with the same result. How can I get reference to the real closest parent of my viewcontroller? Thanks for help in advance!

Look at this answer it has similar problem http://stackoverflow.com/a/9567134/277021 — Cyprian, Aug 15 '12 at 08:32
I've seen it, but it doesn't solve my problem. I don't need access to the moreNavigationController. I need to access my own UINavigationController, that is nested in the moreNavigationController. Thanks for trying to help though — Lukas1, Aug 15 '12 at 08:43

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 15 '12 at 09:43

In short, you can't.

Apple always try to optimise their code. One of their optimisation here is to check whether the ViewController displayed in the list of its UIMoreNavigationController is of type UINavigationController. Because UIMoreNavigationController itself is a UINavigationController it does not want to create another UINavigationController. It's trying to avoid UINavigationController nesting.

When you look at the header file of UIMoreNavigationController you will notice it has a variable UINavigationController* _originalNavigationController; which is accualy the original UINavigationController that you created and that you want to access. Unfortunetly you cant since UIMoreNavigationController is private.

Workaround (ugly)

Pass the reference of your NavigationController to its children when you push them on it's stack.

ok thanks, that explains why the other approach I tried -> using `tabbarcontroller.selectedViewController` didn't work either the way I expected it — Lukas1, Aug 15 '12 at 10:23

Problems with UINavigationController nested within moreViewController

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