How to load a xib file in a UIView

I created a sample project on github to load a UIView from a .xib file inside another .xib file. Or you can do it programmatically.

This is good for little widgets you want to reuse on different UIViewController objects.

  1. New Approach: https://github.com/PaulSolt/CustomUIView
  2. Original Approach: https://github.com/PaulSolt/CompositeXib

Load a Custom UIView from .xib file


To get an object from a xib file programatically you can use: [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"MyXibName" owner:self options:nil] which returns an array of the top level objects in the xib.

So, you could do something like this:

UIView *rootView = [[[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"MyRootView" owner:self options:nil] objectAtIndex:0];
UIView *containerView = [[[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"MyContainerView" owner:self options:nil] lastObject];
[rootView addSubview:containerView];
[self.view addSubview:rootView];