Set the title of Navigation Bar created in Interface Builder

I have a modal view controller whose view comes from a XIB. I want it to have the same look and feel as the rest of my navigation based app, but it's not a view that's pushed to the navigation stack, it's presented modally. I dragged a UINavigationBar in and made it an outlet, but it doesn't have a title property to set. I have two fields that can bring up this modal view, and I want the title set differently depending on which one creates the modal view.

Solution 1:

UINavigationBar's manage a stack of UINavigationItems much like a UINavigationController manager a stack of UIViewControllers. To set what is visible directly, you should use either pushNavigationItem:animated: or setItems:animated: using the navigationItem of the view controller you want the bar to reflect.

eg:

self.navigationItem.title = @"A custom title";
[self.navigationBar pushNavigationItem:self.navigationItem animated:NO];

The above code where you have a property navigationBar which references the stand-alone navigation bar.

If you don't want to manage it yourself, you can do as mplappert suggested and nest your view controller (without a stand-alone UINavigationBar) in a UINavigationController and present the navigation controller modally instead of your view controller.

Solution 2:

Also found this easier way if you've already defined a UINavigationBar in your IB. Assuming self.navigationBar is your IBOutlet:

self.navigationBar.topItem.title = title;

Solution 3:

(Using XCode 4.5.2) Found a method that works directly in Interface Builder - without setting in code.

With the ViewController object selected in (IB), under the Identity Inspector there is a section labeled "User Defined Runtime Attributes". I added the keyPath "title" of type String and set it to the value I wanted.

Tested and this works when pushed onto a Nav Controller stack and when opened modally (with a Modal Nav Controller of course).