Can't call ViewController method from AppDelegate

Question

In AppDelagate I call the following in a method

func example() {
    ViewController().test()
}

and In my ViewController the method is

func test() {
    testView.userInteractionEnabled = true
    buttonTapped(UIButton())
    restartTimer()
}

but it crashes whenever I call the method, due to a nil error with testView. testView is a view in ViewController and not in AppDelegate, but I don't know how to make it so the method executes like how it would if i called it in the ViewController.

Answer 1

An IBOutlet is nil until the view controller calls viewDidLoad . viewDidLoad did not occur since you tried to instantiate the class directly via the call ViewController() .

Thus, testView is nil, as expected. Your AppDelegate should not be responsible for the ViewController logic anyhow.

Answer 2

As you may know by now, your crash is happening due the fact you're accessing a IBOutlet before it get the chance to be initialized. So I'm guessing the testView is declared sort of like this:

@IBOutlet weak var testView: UIView!

Solution A

You can turn it optional instead to avoid this crash:

@IBOutlet weak var testView: UIView?

And change the syntax in your VC to:

testView?.userInteractionEnabled = true

Solution B

If you really need to turn the User Interaction off at this point, you can force the view to load:

let myVc = ViewController()
_ = myVc.view // this will force the myVc.view to be loaded
myVc.test()

This way your IBOutlet s will have the chance to initialize before you run the test() method.