How to use a UITabBar with separate storyboards in iOS8/Swift?

Question

So basically I have several storyboards that contain "reusable" content (like a form and some other things). I have another storyboard that has a UITabBarController with one tab that contains a TableViewController and a detail view, a second tab that opens a Settings view, and potentially a third button that opens the form (referenced earlier in my question) modally. My question is...how can I create this third tab within my Tab Bar Controller storyboard since the view that it opens resides in a separate storyboard (as in I can't drag a segue like is the normal process)?

Answer 1

You can instantiate a view controller programmatically from a storyboard by using the instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier method of the storyboard that defines that view controller.

To get an instance of your form, you may do something along the lines of this:

let storyboard = UIStoryboard(name: "YourFormStoryboard", bundle: nil)
let viewController = storyboard.instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier("formViewController") as! YourFormClass

You then populate the tab bar controller with its root views as you always have, laid out here in the Apple docs:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UITabBarController_Class/