I have a core data application which uses a navigation controller to drill down to a detail view and then if you edit one of the rows of data in the detail view you get taken to an Edit View for the that single line, like in Apples CoreDataBooks example!

The edit view is a UITableviewController which creates its table with a single section single row and a UITextfield in the cell, programatically.

What I want to happen is when you select a row to edit and the edit view is pushed onto the nav stack and the edit view is animated moving across the screen, I want the textfield to be selected as firstResponder so that the keyboard is already showing as the view moves across the screen to take position. Like in the Contacts app or in the CoreDataBooks App.

I currently have the following code in my app which causes the view to load and then you see the keyboard appear (which isn't what I want, I want the keyboard to already be there)

- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated {
    [super viewDidAppear:animated];
    [theTextField becomeFirstResponder];
}

You can't put this in -viewWillAppear as the textfield hasn't been created yet so theTextField is nil. In the CoreDataBooks App where they achieve what i want they load there tableview from a nib so they use the same code but in -viewWillAppear as the textfield has already been created!

Is there anyway of getting around this without creating a nib, I want to keep the implementation programatic to enable greater flexibility.

Many Thanks