How to make a number pad appear without a text box - swift

Question

Hello I am trying to have a number pad appear after a timer is up. Then have my user type numbers on the pad and their input be saved to a variable in my code not a text box. I can't seem to find anything on popping up a number pad without using a text box. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Ok I'm going to give you some code that will greatly help you. You need some sort of UITextView or UITextField to get the system keyboard. So essentially what we will do is have a textField without showing it, and then grab the info off it and store it into the variable.
//Dummy textField instance as a VC property.
let textField = UITextField()
//Add some setup to viewDidLoad
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
textField.delegate = self //Don't forget to make vc conform to UITextFieldDelegateProtocol
textField.keyboardType = .phonePad
//http://stackoverflow.com/a/40640855/5153744 for setting up toolbar
let keyboardToolbar = UIToolbar()
keyboardToolbar.sizeToFit()
let flexBarButton = UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .flexibleSpace, target: nil, action: nil)
let doneBarButton = UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .done, target: self, action: #selector(dismissKeyboard))
keyboardToolbar.items = [flexBarButton, doneBarButton]
textField.inputAccessoryView = keyboardToolbar
//You can't get the textField to become the first responder without adding it as a subview
//But don't worry because its frame is 0 so it won't show.
self.view.addSubview(textField)
}
//When done button is pressed this will get called and initate `textFieldDidEndEditing:`
func dismissKeyboard() {
view.endEditing(true)
}
//This is the whatever function you call when your timer is fired. Important thing is just line of code inside that our dummy code becomes first responder
func timerUp() {
textField.becomeFirstResponder()
}
//This is called when done is pressed and now you can grab value out of the textField and store it in any variable you want.
func textFieldDidEndEditing(_ textField: UITextField) {
textField.resignFirstResponder()
let intValue = Int(textField.text ?? "0") ?? 0
print(intValue)
}

Answer 2

I am using storyboard and this is what I did:
drag-drop a text field
On the storyboard, in the attributes inspector (having selected the text field), under "Drawing", select hidden
make an outlet for the text field in your view controller
make sure your view controller extends the UITextViewDelegate
make your current view controller the delegate
in the required location simply call <textfieldOutlet>.becomeFirstResponder()
Now that this is simply a textfield's data, u can always store the value and use it else where.