How to implement UIPageViewController that utilizes multiple ViewControllers

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First of all, you are absolutely right that the view controllers that constitute the “pages” of the UIPageViewController can be completely different in nature. Nothing whatever says that they have to be instances of the same view controller class.

Now let’s get to the actual problem, which is that you very sensibly need a way to provide the next or previous view controller given the current view controller. That is, indeed, the main issue when using a page view controller.

It would not really be terrible to hold an array of view controllers. After all, a view controller is a lightweight object (it is the view that is the heavyweight object). However, you are also right that the way you’re handling this seems clumsy.

My suggestion is: if you are going to hold the view controller instances in a storyboard, then why not just keep an array of their identifiers? Now you’ve got an array of three strings. How simple can you get? You will also need a single instance variable that keeps track of which identifier corresponds to the view controller that having its view used as the current page (so that you can work out which one is “next” or “previous”); this could just be an integer indexing into the array.

There is then absolutely nothing wrong with instantiating a view controller each time the user “turns the page”. That is what you are supposed to do when a view controller is needed. And you can readily do this by identifier.

Finally, note that if you use the scroll style of page view controller, you won’t even have to do that, because the page view controller caches the view controllers and stops calling the delegate methods (or, at least, calls them less).

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