Getting ready

Create a new iPhone Empty Project in Xamarin Studio and name it ViewControllerApp.

How to do it...

Perform the following steps to load a view with a view controller:

How it works...

When we add a new iPhone View Controller file in a project, in this case MainViewController, Xamarin Studio basically creates and adds the following three files:

Notice that we do not need to add an outlet for the view as this is taken care of by Xamarin Studio. We initialize the controller through its class, as follows:

MainViewController mainController = new MainViewController ();

Then, we assign the controller to the window.RootViewController property, as follows:

window.RootViewController = mainController.

Our view controller is now the root view controller of our app's window, and it is the first one that will be shown when the app starts.

There's more...

The project we have just created only shows how we can add a controller with a view. Notice that we created the outlet for the label inside the MainViewController class, which acts as the file's owner object in the XIB file. To provide some functionality for the MainViewController class, add the following method in the MainViewController class in the MainViewController.cs file:

public override void ViewDidLoad ()
{
  this.myLabel.Text = "View loaded!";
}

This method overrides the UIViewController.ViewDidLoad() method, which is executed after the controller has loaded its view.

See also