UIView vs Container View

Question

So here is the problem I am trying to solve.

In each viewController I am trying to insert ads and the actual control elements. I finished couple of tutorial on raywenderlinch.com to understand that how people professionally put ads in their app. They used UIViews to have two views under mainview of view controller. So I completely understood that one subview hold the ads and another is holding actual app contents. if Ad is loaded take up the screen or else let other view have all available area.

After I came back to xcode I started coding the way I learned there. but when I was dropping UIView on storyboard, I saw containerView, which I think was not present when the tutorial was written.
So I am here to ask about the both approach and their pros and cons.
So basically its UIView vs ContainerView. Which way I should do, and why ?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You use UIView when you already have a view and you do not need to have a dedicated view controller to build and handle interactions within it.

From the UIView help page:

UIView object claims a rectangular region of its enclosing superview (its parent in the view hierarchy) and is responsible for all drawing in that region ...

Simplified structure: YourViewController ---(has)---> UIView

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You use UIContainerView when you need to embed another view controller in the one that you already have. The embedded view controller is in charge of returning a view for the region that the UIViewContainer occupies. Therefore, your UIContainerView knows which view controller to use to render UIView inside the region it occupies.

From the UIContainerView help page:

Container View defines a region within a view controller's view subgraph that can include a child view controller.

Simplified structure: YourViewController ---(has)---> SubViewController ---(has)---> UIView

That SubViewController returns a view and handles its events.