Get to UIViewController from UIView?

Question

Is there a built-in way to get from a UIView to its UIViewController? I know you can get from UIViewController to its UIView via [self view] but I was wondering if there is a reverse reference?

Answer 1

Using the example posted by Brock, I modified it so that it is a category of UIView instead UIViewController and made it recursive so that any subview can (hopefully) find the parent UIViewController.

@interface UIView (FindUIViewController)
- (UIViewController *) firstAvailableUIViewController;
- (id) traverseResponderChainForUIViewController;
@end

@implementation UIView (FindUIViewController)
- (UIViewController *) firstAvailableUIViewController {
    // convenience function for casting and to "mask" the recursive function
    return (UIViewController *)[self traverseResponderChainForUIViewController];
}

- (id) traverseResponderChainForUIViewController {
    id nextResponder = [self nextResponder];
    if ([nextResponder isKindOfClass:[UIViewController class]]) {
        return nextResponder;
    } else if ([nextResponder isKindOfClass:[UIView class]]) {
        return [nextResponder traverseResponderChainForUIViewController];
    } else {
        return nil;
    }
}
@end

To use this code, add it into an new class file (I named mine "UIKitCategories") and remove the class data... copy the @interface into the header, and the @implementation into the .m file. Then in your project, #import "UIKitCategories.h" and use within the UIView code:

// from a UIView subclass... returns nil if UIViewController not available
UIViewController * myController = [self firstAvailableUIViewController];