TabBarController with NavigationBar

Question

I am writing an app that uses the UITabBarController at the bottom.

Hierarchy

- Page 1
- - SubPage 1
- - SubPage 2
- - SubPage 3
- Page 2
- Page 3

Page 1 contains a grid with multiple items, when selected the choosen subpage will be displayed.
On the sub pages I replace the Tabs of the TabBarController with all the subpages and want display a back link in the Navigation Bar.

I create the tabBar programmatically.
At the moment I init the navigationController with the tabBarController as rootViewController.
That seems to work, but I cant change anything on the NavigationBar, setting the title has no effect, buttons dont appear.

What I'm doing wrong? Or is there a better way achieving what I want?

I target iOS5 with ARC (iPad only)

Answer 1

You set the title of the parent navigation controller by setting the title of the child. You'd need to set the title of the tabbar-controller:

myTabBarController.title = @"Page 1";

You also set the buttons of the navigationbar inside the child-view, as the contents of the bar depend on the current visible view:

UIBarButtonItem *myItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"back" style:UIBarButtonItemStylePlain target:self action:@selector(myBackAction:)];
myTabBarController.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem = myItem;

Remember that changing the contents of the tabbar after tapping an item on it is considered bad user experience. There are probably other, better ways to achieve the same effect.