My next task in the development of Fort Collins for Kids is to add the ability to view and edit the Attraction Type. The Attraction Type is stored as a number, but displayed as a string. The values I have in mind are as follows:
- Museum
- Playground
- Sports
- Movie Theater
- Bike Trail
- Hiking Trail
- Arts & Crafts
- Other
As stated in a previous post, I’m adding each field into a cell of a UITableView. My first thought was to use a UIPickerView, and get something that looks like this:
(Obviously, the values in the Picker are the Xcode defaults, and not the list I have above)
This is definitely possible, and I set about creating a custom cell that used a UIPickerView as a ContentView.
As I thought about it some more though, it didn’t feel right. I decided to pop into the iOS 7 Settings app, a canonical example of how to use multiple controls inside a UITableView if there ever was one.
I didn’t find any UIPickers inside a UITableView, but I did see a lot of cases where a child UITableView is used as a Picker instead. Take for example, setting the Search Engine preference for Safari:
This looks a lot more elegant to me. The base UI would look like this:
(Again, mocked up as best I could- the code isn’t written yet)
The current value shows on the base Attraction view. Clicking on it will push a new view onto the screen, containing a tableview with a list of the options above. The currently selected option will be checked (the default is “Other”).
Time to get coding!
Das Haus von Ruh 
I like the second UI over the first – it definitely looks better. I wonder about the usability, though – particularly if you're entering a few attractions in a row, does the switch to a new view – and the potential loss of context of which attraction you're working on – disrupt the user? Can the heading on the second view include the attraction name or other context?
Good point, Bob. The heading on the second view will definitely include the attraction name. Thanks for reading!