retain viewcontroller - message sent to deallocated instance

Question

I'm trying to use the UIWebViewDelegate, however, when I set delegate to it's self, I get a 'message sent to deallocated instance' error.

Actual error: "2014-04-07 22:12:05.402 AppName[746:60b] -[WebViewController respondsToSelector:]: message sent to deallocated instance 0xa47ae00"

I presume this is because the WebViewController instance has not been retained?

Could anyone point me in the right direction for this please?

My structure is: RootViewController > WebViewController (delegate) > WebView

// root.h
@interface RootViewController : UIViewController
@property (strong, nonatomic) WebViewController * webViewController;
@end

// root.m

#import "RootViewController.h"
#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
#import "WebViewController.h"

@interface RootViewController ()

@end

@implementation RootViewController

- (void)viewDidLoad
{

    _webViewController = [[WebViewController alloc] init];

    [self.view addSubview:_webViewController.view];

}

@end

// .h

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface WebViewController : UIViewController <UIWebViewDelegate>
@property(strong) UIWebView *webView;
@end

// .m

#import "WebViewController.h"

@interface WebViewController ()
@end

@implementation WebViewController

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    _webView = [[UIWebView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, self.view.bounds.size.width, self.view.bounds.size.height)];
    _webView.delegate = self;
    NSString *url = @"http://google.com/";
    NSURL *nsurl = [NSURL URLWithString:url];
    NSURLRequest *nsrequest = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:nsurl];
    [_webView loadRequest:nsrequest];
    [self.view addSubview:_webView];
}

-(void)webViewDidStartLoad:(UIWebView *)webView {
    NSLog(@"ui web view started load");
}

Answer 1

I had not set the root view controller like so:

    self.window.rootViewController = rootController;

Answer 2

Try moving your code out of loadView into viewDidLoad, and remove your calls to loadView. I believe loadView is called automatically when the view controller is instantiated and shown, so calling it again might cause you to instantiate your webview twice.

From the docs:

You should never call this method directly. The view controller calls this method when its view property is requested but is currently nil. This method loads or creates a view and assigns it to the view property.