How to push onto an existing UINavigationController stack from SwiftUI?

Question

We're pushing to a SwiftUI view embedded in a UIHostingViewController in UIKit land like this:

First making the UIViewController :

    func hostingController() -> UIViewController {
    let swiftUIView = swiftUIView(viewModel: viewModel(data: [Data, Data, Data]))
    return UIHostingController(rootView: swiftUIView)
}

Then pushing it onto the UINavigationView stack:

[self.navigationController pushViewController:hostingViewController animated:YES];

This gets us to SwiftUI 's environment. But , if our SwiftUI environment has it's own navigation stack with NavigationView and NavigationLink , the original navigationBar 's back button can only navigate back to the original presenting UIViewController .

Is there a way to push a SwiftUI view embedded in a NavigationView onto an existing UINavigationController stack?

The only thought we've had so far is creating a new UIHostingViewController for each new SwiftUI screen, and pushing that onto the stack via some kind of delegate method.

What we're looking for is something like this:

UINavigationStack: [UIViewController -> UIViewController -> SwiftUIView -> SwiftUIView]

Where the back < arrow in the navigationBar will behave as expected.

Please let us know if we can clarify further!

Answer 1

I had a similar problem - I added a SwiftUI view with NavigationView to a UIKit NavigationController which lead to two layers of navigation bars when continuing navigation in the SwiftUI View: UIKit NavigationController -> MyListNavigationView(MyListView) -> DetailView.

Adding SwiftUI view to UIKit NavigationController:

let swiftUIView = MyListNavigationView(content: contentList)
let hostingViewController =  UIHostingController(rootView: swiftUIView)
self.navigationController?.pushViewController(hostingViewController, animated: true)

My simplified SwiftUI views (did not validate if it compiles after simplifications):

struct MyListNavigationView: View {
    @State var content: [String]
    var body: some View {
        NavigationView {  //replace with Group {
            MyListView(content: $content)
                .toolbar {
                    ToolbarItem(placement: .navigationBarTrailing) {
                        NavigationLink {
                            DetailView(data: "New Data")
                        } label: {
                            Image(systemName: "plus")
                        }
                    }
                }
        }
        .navigationViewStyle(.stack)
        .navigationTitle("My Title")
    }
}

struct MyListView: View {
    @Binding var content: [String]
    var body: some View {
        List(content, id: \.self) { data in
            NavigationLink(destination: DetailsView(data: data) {   
                MyRow(data: data)
            }
        }
    }
}

struct MyRow: View {
    let data: String
    var body: some View {
        Text(data)
    }
}

struct DetailView: View {
     let data: String
     var body: some View {
        Text(data)
    }
}

So with that setup I had 2 layers of navigation bars - and with a simple change it all worked out for me: As I only added MyListNavigationView to a UIKit NavigationController, I did not need a standalone SwiftUI NavigationView and just replaced it with a Group - and all navigation/toolbar settings from my SwiftUI views have been adopted by the parent UIKit NavigationController and there was only one navigation bar.