I have a navigation controller with a tableview controller as the first controller, however when the database is empty I want to show the user a view that asks the user for some information to fill the database and show it in the navigation controller instead of the view assigned in storyboard, I guess I would have to do this programmatically, but I'm new to iphone development and honestly dont know where to start.

• objective-c
• ios
• storyboard

Here's how you can do it. Create a new scene in your storyboard for your view controller where the user will submit the info (let's say it's called CollectInfoViewController). Then create a modal segue from your tableview controller to the CollectInfoViewController. In the Attributes Inspector, set the Identifier property of the segue to "CollectInfo" so you can identify it later.

Then when your tableview controller's viewDidLoad method runs, ask the table view delegate whether there are any rows to show. If there are not, programmatically perform the segue to your CollectInfoViewController.

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];   

    if ([self.tableView.dataSource tableView:self.tableView numberOfRowsInSection:0] == 0) {
        [self performSegueWithIdentifier:@"CollectInfo" sender:self];     
    }
}

In your CollectInfoViewController, once the user has entered the information and you have stored it in your database then you can call the following from within CollectInfoViewController to dismiss that view. This will return the user to the tableview.

[self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];

Finally, back in your tableview controller, you might need to reload your table with the new data that's been collected. You can do that in viewWillAppear, which will be called when the modal view controller is dismissed.

- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
    [super viewWillAppear:animated];
    [self.tableView reloadData];
}