Adding navigation items to view controllers in interface builder - pwnd me

Question

I am perplexed by Interface builder. I had SDK version 2.x (can't recall now) and just upgraded to the newest 3.1 and now things do not work the same.
So that I could have a custom navigation item applied to my view controller, I have followed the instructions here:
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptua l/IB_UserGuide/EditingNibFileObjects/EditingNibFileObjects.html
in section entitled "Configuring the Views for Additional Navigation Levels"
When I try to load the nib at runtime I get this error:
[* Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: '-[UIViewController _loadViewFromNibNamed:bundle:] loaded the "EventCreate" nib but the view outlet was not set.']
The view is set on the controller; however, I did not do anything to set the file's owner since the before-mentioned doc does not say anything about that. It seems the view must be set on the file's owner to make it work. This is confusing.
I've noticed that the nibs I had set up using the previous release (2.x can't remember now) aren't totally supported in the way I had them set up with navigation items. In IB, I would set the File's Owner to by view controller and then I could drop a navigation item in and connect that right away to the controller, and the controller had a navigation item outlet exposed by default. That doesn't appear to work any more. When I open my older nibs (xib files) the navigation item outlet shows up in the inspector for the controller BUT its greyed out, as if obsolete. There's no navigation item outlet showing in IB anymore, it seems when building new xibs. So, I don't know what to do here.
Can somebody help me?

Answer 1

crouchingchicken wrote:
I would set the File's Owner to by view controller and then I could drop a navigation item in and connect that right away to the controller
Yes, I agree. The nav item used to show up as an outlet of any view controller.
When I try to load the nib at runtime I get this error:
The problem with the doc is this line:
To push a new view controller at runtime, _create a new instance of your custom UIViewController subclass, initialize it with the nib_ file you created for it, and push it on the navigation controller stack.
The underlined portion can lead us to believe we can alloc and initWithNibName:bundle: as we would when File's Owner is a proxy for the controller we create in code. But that won't work in this case, since the controller we want is the one that's created from the view controller object when the nib is loaded. In other words, we don't want to alloc a new controller, we just want to grab the object made from the nib. Here's what to do:
// RootViewController.m
- (IBAction)nextView {
NSLog(@"nextView");
// SecondViewController *viewController = [[SecondViewController alloc]
// initWithNibName:@"SecondViewController" bundle:nil];
NSArray *nib = [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"SecondViewController"
owner:self options:nil];
NSLog(@"nib=%@", nib);
SecondViewController *viewController = [nib objectAtIndex:0];
[self.navigationController pushViewController:viewController animated:YES];
// [viewController release];
Be sure not to release the object obtained from the nib, since we didn't alloc it. Top level objects created from a nib are autoreleased. You can put some logging into the second view controller's dealloc to verify it gets dealloced when popped:
// SecondViewController.m
- (void)dealloc {
NSLog(@"dealloc: %@", self);
[super dealloc];
- Ray