Objective C - Hiding multiple UI elements

So 开发者_开发百科I have an application made from 2 view controllers, one controller is a main screen where all the UI elements are displayed, the other controller handles what UI elements are on the main controller.

Currently I have lots of statements like to hide / show certain elements depending on what the user wants to display.

label.hidden = TRUE;
label2.hidden = TRUE;
label3.hidden = FALSE;

Obviously the actual application is a lot larger than this and there are a lot more statements.

I was wondering if there is a better way to do this?

I was thinking a seperate UIView for each possible main screen variation. Then display a UIView depending on what elements are to be displayed. Would this be correct?

Thanks

I think you should even create multiple viewControllers.

A parent UIView as you suggest is probably the best option in terms of keeping the hierarchy obvious and editable in Interface Builder (or the Xcode 4 analogue thereof).

An alternative would be to put all the views you want to toggle into an array just once, and perform:

[arrayOfViews makeObjectsPerformSelector:@selector(setHidden:)
              withObject:[NSNumber numberWithBool:YES]];

Which has the effect of hiding every single view in the array.

In my apps I tend to have some groups of views that I can move or hide/show together, in which case I collect them in a single parent view, some that move or hide/show alone, in which case I obviously treat them singly, and some that are so different from one orientation to the other that I keep alternates as you suggest.

Straying slightly from the topic, if you're doing distinct views for different orientations you might be better implementing something like:

- (void)willAnimateRotationToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)toInterfaceOrientation
                 duration:(NSTimeInterval)duration
{
    if(UIInterfaceOrientationIsPortrait(toInterfaceOrientation))
    {
        portraitView.alpha = 1.0f;
        landscapeView.alpha = 0.0f;
    }
    else
    {
        portraitView.alpha = 0.0f;
        landscapeView.alpha = 1.0f;
    }
}

Which will give a sort of cross-fade between the two views as part of the rotation animation because a CoreAnimation block is automatically arranged around willAnimateRotationToInterfaceOrientation:duration: and alpha is an animatable property.