MFMessageComposeViewController will not present in form sheet on iPad

Question

If I run this code on an iPad (iOS 8) from a view controller:

MFMessageComposeViewController *controller = [[[MFMessageComposeViewController alloc]init]autorelease];
controller.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationFormSheet;
[self presentViewController:controller animated:YES completion:nil];

I get a fullscreen message composition view. But I see no documentation or reference anywhere of MFMessageComposeViewController ignoring its modal presentation style. Is this expected? Or am I missing something?

Answer 1

Faced a similar issue recently targeting iOS8. It does seem like MFMessageComposeViewController ignores the modalPresentationStyle property. Strangely enough MFMailComposeViewController doesn't seem to have this issue. Anyways, to resolve it, I embedded the MFMessageComposeViewController inside a UIViewController and presented that instead. Below is the code to accomplish this:

var messageViewController = MFMessageComposeViewController()
messageViewController.messageComposeDelegate = self

let containerViewController = UIViewController()
containerViewController.view.addSubview(messageViewController.view)
messageViewController.willMoveToParentViewController(nil)
containerViewController.addChildViewController(messageViewController)
messageViewController.didMoveToParentViewController(containerViewController) 

containerViewController.modalPresentationStyle = .OverFullScreen
containerViewController.transitioningDelegate = self
presentViewController(containerViewController, animated: true, completion: nil)