Why does my view controller inside a UIPopoverPresentationController take up the whole screen?

Question

I am in the process of upgrading an app from ios 7 to ios 8, and one of the areas I am having trouble with is the new UIPopoverPresentationController. For some reason, whenever I present a view controller using this class, the view controller does not appear in a popover, but instead presents like its being pushed onto the nav stack (takes up the whole screen). I'm sure I'm missing the obvious, but between Apple's documentation and the numerous Swift answers on SO I am missing it. Here's my code:

-(void)createAndSizePopover:(NSString*)tableName
{
    //Create the picklist
    self.pickListPopoverViewController = nil;
    //NOTE WSPickListViewController is a UIViewController
    self.pickListPopoverViewController = [[WSPickListViewController alloc] initWithNibName:nil bundle:nil withPickListItem:self.densityUnits andPickListTableName:tableName isSlimLine:YES];
    self.pickListPopoverViewController.showSearchBar = NO;
    self.pickListPopoverViewController.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationPopover;
    ((WSPickListViewController*)self.pickListPopoverViewController).pickListItemDelegate = self;

    //Size the popover
    NSInteger rowsCount = [self.pickListPopoverViewController.allObjects count];
    NSInteger singleRowHeight = 35;
    NSInteger totalRowsHeight = rowsCount * singleRowHeight;
    NSInteger fourRowsHeight = 6 * singleRowHeight;
    NSInteger height = (totalRowsHeight >= fourRowsHeight) ? fourRowsHeight : totalRowsHeight;

    CGFloat largestLabelWidth = 0;
    for (WSPickList* pickItem in self.pickListPopoverViewController.allObjects)
    {
        CGSize labelSize = [pickItem.name sizeWithAttributes:@{NSFontAttributeName: [UIFont fontWithName:@"HelveticaNeue" size:20.0], NSForegroundColorAttributeName : [UIColor blackColor]}];
        if (labelSize.width > largestLabelWidth)
        {
            largestLabelWidth = labelSize.width;
        }
    }

    CGFloat popoverWidth = largestLabelWidth + 50;

    [self.pickListPopoverViewController setPreferredContentSize:CGSizeMake(popoverWidth, height)];
}

-(void)showOrHidePopover:(id)sender withTableName:(NSString*)tableName
{
    //Show/Hide the popover
    if (self.popover != nil)
    {
        [self.pickListPopoverViewController dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:nil];
        self.popover = nil;
        self.pickListPopoverViewController = nil;
        return;
    }
    else
    {
        [self createAndSizePopover:tableName];
    }

    [self presentViewController:self.pickListPopoverViewController animated:YES completion: nil];

    self.popover = self.pickListPopoverViewController.popoverPresentationController;        
    self.popover.permittedArrowDirections = UIPopoverArrowDirectionRight;
    self.popover.sourceView = sender;

    if ([sender isKindOfClass:[UIButton class]])
    {
        self.popover.sourceRect = ((UIButton*)sender).bounds;
    }
    else if ([sender isKindOfClass:[UICollectionViewCell class]])
    {
        self.popover.sourceRect = ((UICollectionViewCell*)sender).bounds;
    }
}

I'm ok with an answer in either Objective-C or Swift (since I need to learn that anyway). Thanks in advance for any help provided!

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 21 '14 at 13:33

After several days of Google'ing and testing theories, I finally found several issues in my code.

First, the presentation cannot come before setting up the popoverPresentationController. I know that flies in the face of Apple's documentation, which even states it seems "counterintuitive" to present the view controller before setting up the popover controller, but even still this is what worked for me.

Second, my implementation of adaptivePresentationStyleForPresentationController: was wrong. I was returning UIModalPresentationPopover but I should have been returning UIModalPresentationNone as follows:

-(UIModalPresentationStyle)adaptivePresentationStyleForPresentationController:(UIPresentationController *)controller
{
    return UIModalPresentationNone;
}

Hope this helps someone else.

Why does my view controller inside a UIPopoverPresentationController take up the whole screen?

1 Answers1