I think Apple are covering their backs a little here for a potentially kludgy piece of API.

  [self dismissViewControllerAnimated:NO completion:nil]

Is actually a bit of a fiddle. Although you can - legitimately - call this on the presented view controller, all it does is forward the message on to the presenting view controller. If you want to do anything over and above just dismissing the VC, you will need to know this, and you need to treat it much the same way as a delegate method - as that's pretty much what it is, a baked-in somewhat inflexible delegate method.

Perhaps they've come across loads of bad code by people not really understanding how this is put together, hence their caution.

But of course, if all you need to do is dismiss the thing, go ahead.

My own approach is a compromise, at least it reminds me what is going on:

  [[self presentingViewController] dismissViewControllerAnimated:NO completion:nil]

[Swift]

  self.presentingViewController?.dismiss(animated: false, completion:nil)

Updated for Swift 3

I came here just wanting to dismiss the current (presented) View Controller. I'm making this answer for anyone coming here with the same purpose.

Navigation Controller

If you are using a navigation controller, then it is quite easy.

Go back to the previous view controller:

// Swiftself.navigationController?.popViewController(animated: true)// Objective-C[self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:YES];

Go back to the root view controller:

// Swiftself.navigationController?.popToRootViewController(animated: true)// Objective-C[self.navigationController popToRootViewControllerAnimated:YES];

(Thanks to this answer for the Objective-C.)

Modal View Controller

When a View Controller is presented modally, you can dismiss it (from the second view controller) by calling

// Swiftself.dismiss(animated: true, completion: nil)// Objective-C[self dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:nil];

The documentation says,

The presenting view controller is responsible for dismissing the viewcontroller it presented. If you call this method on the presented viewcontroller itself, UIKit asks the presenting view controller to handlethe dismissal.

So it works for the presented view controller to call it on itself. Here is a full example.

Delegates

The OP's question was about the complexity of using delegates to dismiss a view.

• This Objective-C answer goes into it quite a bit.
• Here is a Swift example.

To this point I have not needed to use delegates since I usually have a navigation controller or modal view controllers, but if I do need to use the delegate pattern in the future, I will add an update.

This is for view controller reusability.

Your view controller shouldn't care if it is being presented as a modal, pushed on a navigation controller, or whatever. If your view controller dismisses itself, then you're assuming it is being presented modally. You won't be able to push that view controller onto a navigation controller.

By implementing a protocol, you let the parent view controller decide how it should be presented/pushed and dismissed/popped.