Creating an iOS Child Theme

In a Child Theme, you leverage a parent Theme’s behavior and UI components, but you can modify the appearance and position of the UI components. Note that you can’t add or remove any components and the parent Theme must be a Full Theme. The Child Theme presents visual changes with its own XIB file and inherits the parent’s View class.

For example, the Child Theme in Figure 1 presents the same UI components as the Login Screenlet’s Default Theme, but enlarges them for viewing on devices with larger screens.

Figure 1: The UI components are enlarged in the example Child Theme's XIB file.

You can follow these steps to create a Child Theme:

1. In Xcode, create a new XIB file that’s named after the Screenlet’s View class and your Theme. By convention, an XIB file for a Screenlet with a View class named FooScreenletView and a Theme named BarTheme must be named FooScreenletView_barTheme.xib. You can use content from the parent Theme’s XIB file as a foundation for your new XIB file. In your new XIB, you can change the UI components’ visual properties (e.g., their position and size). You mustn’t change, however, the XIB file’s custom class, outlet connection, or restorationIdentifier–these must match those of the parent’s XIB file.

   Note: The XIB file name serves as the Theme’s Xcode name. For example, the Theme in Figure 1 inherits from the Login Screenlet’s Default Theme, which uses the View class LoginView_default. The new child Theme is named Large because it’s purpose is to enlarge the Screenlet’s UI components. In Xcode, it’s assigned the Theme Name large. The XIB file is named LoginView_large.xib, after the Login Screenlet’s View class and the Theme’s Xcode name.

You can optionally package your Theme and/or start using it.

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