Best way to show loading screen in iPhone app?

Question

I am creating what is essentially a web application. Each piece of data must be retrieved from the web API. That way, every UITableView I show takes some time to fill in the data, and I'm struggling to find a good way to show the user a loading screen.

Now I am popping up an action sheet, but that seems a bit wrong. Ideally, I would open an empty view above the table view with “Loading ...” on it, and then disappear when the data arrives, but I cannot think of a way to do this in 8 places in my application without massive code duplication.

Answer 1

for me there are two options.

• Use alertview
• Use MBProgressHUD.

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• For alertView, you must put the UIAlertView variable in the .h file. Then put the following code - when you request / load data.

  av=[[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Loading Data" message:@"" delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:nil otherButtonTitles:nil];
ActInd=[[UIActivityIndicatorView alloc] initWithActivityIndicatorStyle:UIActivityIndicatorViewStyleWhiteLarge];
[ActInd startAnimating];
[ActInd setFrame:CGRectMake(125, 60, 37, 37)];
[av addSubview:ActInd];
[av show];

Now, after processing is complete, place the following statement.

[av dismissWithClickedButtonIndex:0 animated:YES];
[av release]; av=nil;

• Another way: MBProgressHUD
• This is very useful and ready for you - you just need to follow these steps.

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• Download it from the specified link
• Import both files into your project (copy no link)
• #import "MBProgressHUD.h" - import this when you want to use the progress view.
• MBProgressHUD *mbProcess; - declare a variable in the * .h file.
• Put the following code during processing (in the * .m file)

mbProcess=[[MBProgressHUD alloc] initWithView:self.view];
mbProcess.labelText=@ "Loading Data";
[self.view addSubview:mbProcess];
[mbProcess setDelegate:self];
[mbProcess show:YES];

7. When your processing is complete, put this line. [mbProcess hide:YES];
8. Do not forget to add the MBProgressHUD delegation method to your * .m file. like this

#pragma mark -
#pragma mark MBProgressHUDDelegate methods

 - (void)hudWasHidden { // Remove HUD from screen when the HUD was hidded [mbProcess removeFromSuperview]; [mbProcess release]; } 

Answer 2

If you want a nice look, check out http://github.com/matej/MBProgressHUD