I just had a look, and my blog is the number one hit on google for the search phrase “iphone nibless.” That leads to a blog post I wrote on the subject last year. I linked to another blog that explained how to accomplish such a goal, but that blog post has since been taken down. Hrmph. Okay, I guess I have to cover this subject again.
Generally speaking, Apple makes beautiful apps that are elegant and easy to use. Interface Builder is a glaring exception. I can’t stand that thing. So unbelievably complicated. I can’t ever find what I’m looking for.
If you’re writing Mac apps, I guess you’re stuck with it. Most Mac windows contain a lot of controls, and you need a way to design them. If you’re writing iPhone apps, it’s a net loss. Most iPhone views contain a single control that takes up the entire view area, so Interface Builder is an unnecessary complication. So I’m going to tell you how to make an iPhone app that does not require any nibs at all. I am using Xcode 3.2.1 on Snow Leopard, but these instructions will likely work for older versions as well.
1) Start Xcode. From the File menu, pick “New Project.” In the window that opens, select the iPhone OS Application category on the left. In the group on the right, pick “Window-based Application.” This may work fine for the other project templates, but I haven’t tested that. Create the new project, name it whatever you want.
2) Remove MainWindow.xib from the project and put it into the trash. It is no longer needed. (Yay!)
3) Edit the Info.plist for your project by double-clicking on it. It will have a name similar to projectname-Info.plist. The plist file will have a key named “Main nib file base name,” with the value MainWindow. Remove this key completely: select it, and press the Delete key. Save the file.
4) Xcode will have created an app delegate class for your project, named something like niblessAppDelegate. Yuck, what a horrible name. Rename this class to AppController, by directly editing the header and source files for the class. You can of course pick a different name, or even skip this step altogether, but I’m going to assume from here on out that your app delegate class is called AppController.
5) At this point, you have destroyed the mechanism that iPhone OS normally uses to recognize the name of your app delegate class, which it needs to know to load your app. Fortunately, there is an easy way around this: you must pass your app delegate’s class name to UIApplicationMain(). Xcode created a file called main.m that contains your app’s main() function. Edit it now, and change main() so that it looks like this:
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { NSAutoreleasePool* pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init]; int retVal = UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, nil, @"AppController"); [pool release]; pool = nil; return retVal; }
That’s it, you’re done. You may continue modifying this project until you have a real application.
At this point, you might be thinking: Whoa, scary change. Is this really safe? Well, I can offer myself up as an example. I’ve submitted two of my own apps to the App Store that use this technique, both of which have been downloaded thousands of times. I’ve gotten hundreds of emails from users over various issues, but my apps not having nibs has never been a problem.