Logging the class name of all UIViewControllers in a project

The answer is to swizzle the methods! Here is what we came up with:

#import "UIViewController+Logging.h"
#import <objc/runtime.h>

@implementation UIViewController (Logging)

-(void)swizzled_viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
    NSLog(@"Current View Class: %@", NSStringFromClass(self.class));
    [self swizzled_viewDidAppear:animated];
}

+ (void)load
{
    Method original, swizzled;

    original = class_getInstanceMethod(self, @selector(viewDidAppear:));
    swizzled = class_getInstanceMethod(self, @selector(swizzled_viewDidAppear:));

    method_exchangeImplementations(original, swizzled);

}
@end

viewWillAppear log

Here is a solution to print the current view controller class name when it appears, in the console:

• Create a Symbolic Breakpoint in Xcode
• for Symbol, add -[UIViewController viewWillAppear:]
• for Action, add a Debugger Command and this expression: expr -- (void) printf("🔘 %s\n", (char *)object_getClassName($arg1))
• check Automatically continue after evaluating actions.

This has helped me a lot whenever I got lost in the project!

deinit log

You can also add a log to see when your view controllers deinit is called:

• Create another Symbolic Breakpoint
• for Symbol, add -[UIViewController dealloc]
• for Action, add a Debugger Command and this expression: expr -- (void) printf("🗑 %s\n", (char *)object_getClassName($arg1))
• check Automatically continue after evaluating actions.

This one is very handy to make sure the view controller gets released from memory and also a good indicator for catching the retain cycles.

I don't suggest using swizzling as it might risk your code being less maintainable.

Here is solution for this

In your .pch file include this

#define UIViewController MyViewController
#import "MyViewController.h"

Create your new UIViewController sub class as

.h file

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

#ifdef UIViewController
#undef UIViewController
#endif
@interface MyViewController : UIViewController

@end
#ifndef UIViewController
#define UIViewController MyViewController
#endif

And .m file

#import "MyViewController.h"

@implementation MyViewController

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];
    NSLog(@"Current View Class: %@", NSStringFromClass(self.class));
}

@end