How to hide buttons which I had allocated in for loop? - iphone

Question

I have created 3 UIbuttons on the top of the screen. Now after clicking every button I got the 5 buttons for each at below with different background images. Below is the code for my first button(located at top) by which I got 5 images in my view controller.
-(IBAction) btnforimages1click:(id)sender {
for (int a=0; a<5 ; a++) {
if (UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() == UIUserInterfaceIdiomPad )
{
buttonsforbundle1 = [[UIButton alloc]initWithFrame:CGRectMake(100*a,300 ,100 ,90 )];
[buttonsforbundle1 addTarget:self action:#selector(btn4images1:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];
buttonsforbundle1.tag = a;
[buttonsforbundle1 setBackgroundImage:[UIImage imageNamed:[bundle1 objectAtIndex:a]] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
[self.view addSubview:buttonsforbundle1];
}
}
I do the same for other two buttons also. Now here I want is, when I click any of my top 3 buttons
I just want to display the related buttons (created in for loop)
I want to hide the other buttons related to other Top most buttons.
Please suggest me how to solve this.

Answer 1

You have at least three options:
1) Access UI element by tag:
If you can manage to issue unique tag number in your btnforimages1click, btnforimages2click, btnforimages3click for your other 5 added UIButtons, then you can access them:
UIButton *button = (UIButton *)[self.view viewWithTag:99];
[button removeFromSuperview];
2) Keep reference of the created buttons:
// in view.h
NSMutableArray *my_created_buttons;
...
// in view init
[[my_created_buttons alloc] init];
...
-(IBAction) btnforimages1click:(id)sender {
for (UIButton *b in my_created_buttons {
[b removeFromSuperview];
}
if([my_created_buttons count]) {
[my_created_buttons removeAllObjects];
}
... let buttonsforbundle1 local variable since we store current 5 button set in array
UIButton *buttonsforbundle1;
... in your for loop add this after creating and adding to view
[my_created_buttons addObject:buttonsforbundle1];
}
You can further refactor these code eg. by making mutablearray management to other method.
3) Keep it in Interface Builder
I think it is the easiest option, create 5 UIButtons in Interface Builder and have 5 IBOutlet for them. Then in your btnforimages1click you can eg:
-(IBAction) btnforimages1click:(id)sender {
self.IBbutton1 setBackgroundImage[UIImage imageNamed:[bundle1 objectAtIndex:0]] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
self.IBbutton2 setBackgroundImage[UIImage imageNamed:[bundle1 objectAtIndex:1]] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
self.IBbutton3 setBackgroundImage[UIImage imageNamed:[bundle1 objectAtIndex:2]] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
self.IBbutton4 setBackgroundImage[UIImage imageNamed:[bundle1 objectAtIndex:3]] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
self.IBbutton5 setBackgroundImage[UIImage imageNamed:[bundle1 objectAtIndex:4]] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
}
So you don't hide them, just change the background image. Moreover you don't have to deal with different touchUpInside event, use only one method, and in that one click method, you can distinguish between the different clicked UIButton by checking their tag (plus you have to use a variable to check which of the 3 top UIButton was clicked).