tabBarController and navigationControllers in landscape mode, episode II

Question

I have a UITabBarController, and each tab handles a different UIViewController that pushes on the stack new controllers as needed. In two of these tabs I need, when a specific controller is reached, the ability to rotate the iPhone and visualize a view in landscape mode. After struggling a lot I have found that it is mandatory subclassing UITabBarController to override shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation. However, if i simply return YES in the implementation, the following undesirable side effect arises:

every controller in every tab is automatically put in landscape mode when rotating the iPhone.

Even overriding shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation in each controller to return NO does not work: when the iPhone is rotated, the controller is put in landscape mode.

I implemented shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation as follows in the subclassed UITabBarController:

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation
{
    if([self selectedIndex] == 0 || [self selectedIndex] == 3)
        return YES;

    return NO;
}

So that only the two tabs I am interested in actually get support for landscape mode. Is there a way to support landscape mode for a specific controller on the stack of a particular tab?

I tried, without success, something like

(BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation {

if([self selectedIndex] == 0 || [self selectedIndex] == 3)
{   
   if ([[self selectedViewController] isKindOfClass: [landscapeModeViewController class]])
           return YES;
    }

     return NO;

}

Also, I tried using the delegate method didSelectViewController, without success. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Answer 1

Here's an extension to UITabBarController that delegates calls to shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation to the currently selected child controller. Using this extension, you don't need to subclass UITabBarController anymore and you can use shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation in your controllers like one would expect.

UITabBarController+Autorotate.h:

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface UITabBarController (Autorotate)
@end

UITabBarController+Autorotate.m:

#import "UITabBarController+Autorotate.h"

@implementation UITabBarController (Autorotate)

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation {
    UIViewController *controller = self.selectedViewController;
    if ([controller isKindOfClass:[UINavigationController class]])
        controller = [(UINavigationController *)controller visibleViewController];
    return [controller shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:interfaceOrientation];
}

@end