viewWillDisappear: Determine whether view controller is being popped or is showing a sub-view controller

Question

I'm struggling to find a good solution to this problem. In a view controller's -viewWillDisappear: method, I need to find a way to determine whether it is because a view controller is being pushed onto the navigation controller's stack, or whether it is because the view controller is disappearing because it has been popped.

At the moment I'm setting flags such as isShowingChildViewController but it's getting fairly complicated. The only way I think I can detect it is in the -dealloc method.

Answer 1

You can use the following.

- (void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated {
  [super viewWillDisappear:animated];
  NSArray *viewControllers = self.navigationController.viewControllers;
  if (viewControllers.count > 1 && [viewControllers objectAtIndex:viewControllers.count-2] == self) {
    // View is disappearing because a new view controller was pushed onto the stack
    NSLog(@"New view controller was pushed");
  } else if ([viewControllers indexOfObject:self] == NSNotFound) {
    // View is disappearing because it was popped from the stack
    NSLog(@"View controller was popped");
  }
}

This is, of course, possible because the UINavigationController's view controller stack (exposed through the viewControllers property) has been updated by the time that viewWillDisappear is called.