This may seem like a very simple question, however I haven't been able to discover a simple option yet...
I have a series of UITextFields followed by a UITextView. How can I incorporated the TextFields and the TextView in the same method below.
-(BOOL) textFieldDidBeginEditing:(UITextField *) textField{
textField = activeField;
if([self.textField1 isFirstResponder]){activeField = textField1;}
else if([self.textField2 isFirstResponder]){activeField = textField2;}
else if([self.textField3 isFirstResponder]){activeField = textField3;}
else if([self.textView1 isFirstResponder]){ activeField = textView1;}
[scrollView1 scrollRectToVisible:[activeField frame] animated:YES];
return NO;
}
The last line causes a warning of:
Incompatible pointer types assigning to 'UITextField *_strong' from 'UITextView *_strong'
This is due (I'm sure) to the obvious fact that the UITextField and the UITextView are different Objects... which is fine however is there a way to get around this as I wish to be able to advance through the textFields and TextViews with a next and previous button.
as per this method
-(void) nextTextField:(id)sender{
if([self.textField1 isFirstResponder]){activeField = textField2;}
else if([self.textField2 isFirstResponder]){activeField = textField3;}
else if([self.textField3 isFirstResponder]){activeField = textView1;}
else if([self.textView1 isFirstResponder]){ activeField = textField1;}
}
I was hoping for a casting sort of option however I am a little confused as to how to cast in objective C... This might sound dumb however
activeField = ((UITextField) textView1);
is how I'd have cast in Java but it seems I just can't seem to get he syntax right.
Should I cast to a UIView as they both inherit from that?
Thank you in advance
Okay, so you don't need to store activeField, for this method, so the only relevant code would be your nextTextField: method. Try changing it to:
-(void) nextTextField:(id)sender{
if([self.textField1 isFirstResponder]) {[textField2 becomeFirstResponder];}
else if([self.textField2 isFirstResponder]) {[textField3 becomeFirstResponder];}
else if([self.textField3 isFirstResponder]) {[textView1 becomeFirstResponder];}
else if([self.textView1 isFirstResponder]) {[textField1 becomeFirstResponder];}
}
You don't need to cast to a different type or anything.
I think you have a few issues with your thinking. You will need to go down two levels to get to a common super type. Both UITextField and UITextView are "visible" components so they inherit from UIView. They can both be cast to UIView but not to each other. But this won't help you with your question. I think you may be struggling with delegation also.
The method textFieldDidBeginEditing: is a delegate call and it only works with UITextField. This is why the class that contains your method above should implement UITextFieldDelegate. When you set focus to the UITextField, UITextField first checks to see that the delegate is not nil. If the delegate property holds a class then UITextField checks to see if it implements the textFieldDidBeginEditing: method explicitly. If the method is implemented in the delegate then the UITextField calls the method.
It is no different with the UITextView. However UITextView doesn't even know about the textFieldDidBeginEditing: method. It has its own delegate and its own method that performs the same general function as textFieldDidBeginEditing:. The UITextView version of this method is called textViewDidBeginEditing:. Like the UITextfield the UITextView checks that the delegate is not nil and that it implements textViewDidBeginEditing:. If these requirements are met then UITextView will textViewDidBeginEditing. However UITextView will never call textFieldDidBeginEditing:.
Finally objects cannot be cast into something they're not. They can only be cast as its own type or any of its ancestors.
You will need to set up both each components' method (textFieldDidBeginEditing and textViewDidBeginEditing) for this to work.
Hope this helps.
Related
I have 2 textFields side by side, countryCodeTextField and cellphoneTextField
On countryCodeTextField. I have an action selectCountry that happens on Edit Did Begin on the countryCodeTextField
- (IBAction)selectCountry:(id)sender {
countryCodeTextField.delegate = self;
[countryCodeTextField resignFirstResponder];
Note that self implements the <UITextFieldDelegate>.
Problem is when user click's cellphone the keyboard is displayed if he clicks on countryCodeTextField the keyboard is never dismissed.
If the person clicks the countryCode first then the keyboard never appears(which is what I want).
Why isn't the keyboard hidden when the user clicks cellphoneTextField first and then countryCodeTextField?
If you don't want the user to be able to edit a particular UITextField, set it to not be enabled.
UITextField *textField = ... // Allocated somehow
textfield.enabled = NO
Or just check the enabled checkbox in Interface Builder. Then the textfield will still be there and you'll be able to update it by configuring the text. But as sort of mentioned in comments, users expect UITextFields to be editable.
Also, why are you setting the delegate in the IBAction callback? I would think you'd be better off doing this in Interface Builder or when you create the UITextField in code.
EDIT:
Ok - so you want users to be able to select the box, but then bring up a custom subview(s) from which they select something which will fill the box.
So set the UITextField delegate when you create it (as mentioned above) and implement the following from the UITextFieldDelegate protocol:
- (BOOL)textFieldShouldBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField {
return NO;
}
to return NO. Note that if you are using the same delegate for both of your UITextFields, you will need to make this method return YES for the other field. For example, something like:
- (BOOL)textFieldShouldBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField {
if (textField == countryTextField)
return NO;
return YES;
}
Hopefully this should stop the keyboard being displayed - and now you have to work out how to fire your own subviews, which I'd suggest doing via an IBAction (touch up or something perhaps). You'll have to test various things out here, but remember you're kinda corrupting the point of UITextField and maybe it'll work and maybe it won't, and maybe it'll break in the next iOS upgrade.
Okay, so first, I think you shouldn't be using a UITextField. I think you should be using a UIButton and have the current value showing as the button's title. However, if you have your heart set on it, I would use our good friend inputView, a property on UITextField, and set that to your custom input view (which I assume is a UIPickerView or similar.)
This has the added bonus of not breaking your app horribly for blind and visually impaired users, something you should probably be aware of before you go messing about with standard behaviour.
In your method :
- (IBAction)textFieldDidBeginEditing: (UITextField *)textField
call this :
[textField becomeFirstResponder];
and apply checks for the two fields i.e., when textField is the countryCodeTextField write :
[textField resignFirstResponder];
and call your method :
[self selectCountry];
In this method display the list of country codes.
So Your code will be :
- (BOOL)textFieldShouldBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField {
return YES;
}
- (IBAction)textFieldDidBeginEditing: (UITextField *)textField{
[textField becomeFirstResponder];
if (textField == countryCodeTextField){
[textField resignFirstResponder];
[self selectCountry];
}
}
-(IBAction)selectCountry{
//display the list no need to do anything with the textfield.Only set text of TextField as the selected countrycode.
}
On a view controller I have multiple textfields, which all use the same delegate. Now in the delegate the code gets really ugly since I have to differentiate between all the textfields (bunch of if/else-if or a switch statement). I came a cross this article:
Blocks in textfield delegates
But from this I still don't understand how this solves the problem? Doesn't this basically call one method and pass it the text and the method has no idea what textfield gave the string? You would still need to differentiate between the textfields, but this time inside the block (with the usual if(textfield == bazTextField)...).
I don't know that it exactly solves the problem so much as shifts it (and into viewDidLoad, which usually gets a bit of mush-mash in it anyway).
However in that example the block itself was being passed in the textfield to run comparisons with and "remembers" the values of all the instance variables as well (if it refers to them), so that's how it knows what text and text field is being dealt with.
I don't see how that code exactly is supposed to help though, since it assigns one block to the single delegate class to be used with all text field delegates - unless perhaps you were supposed to have one per text field, each with a different block. Then you have way more code than you'd have had with the if statements!
The article doesn't make it clear, but I believe the idea is to create one of these blocks (and block delegate objects) for each UITextField that you wish to have respond to textFieldShouldReturn.
hm, maybe I didn't completely understand the article, but I don't see the advantage of using blocks instead of selectors in that concrete example.
you could achieve something similar like this
#interface AlternativeTextFieldDelegate : NSObject <UITextFieldDelegate>
{
SEL selectorToCall;
id objectToCall;
}
- (void) setObjectToCall:(id)obj selector:(SEL)selector;
#end
#implementation AlternativeTextFieldDelegate
- (void) setObjectToCall:(id)obj selector:(SEL)selector
{
objectToCall = obj;
selectorToCall = selector;
}
- (BOOL)textFieldShouldReturn:(UITextField *)textField
{
[objectToCall performSelector:selectorToCall];
return YES;
}
#end
and the view controller
#interface ViewWithTextFieldsController : UIViewController
{
UITextField *tf1;
AlternativeTextFieldDelegate *delegateForTF1;
UITextField *tf2;
AlternativeTextFieldDelegate *delegateForTF2;
}
// ...IBOutlets and all that...
- (void) tf1ShouldReturn; // handles shouldReturn for tf1
- (void) tf2ShouldReturn; // handles shouldReturn for tf2
#end
#implementation ViewWithTextFieldsController
- (void) viewDidLoad // or wherever
{
delegateForTF1 = [[AlternativeTextFieldDelegate alloc] init];
[delegateForTF1 setObjectToCall:self selector:#selector(tf1ShouldReturn)];
tf1.delegate = delegateForTF1;
delegateForTF2 = [[AlternativeTextFieldDelegate alloc] init];
[delegateForTF2 setObjectToCall:self selector:#selector(tf2ShouldReturn)];
tf2.delegate = delegateForTF2;
}
// ...
#end
don't really know if that's any better than chaining if-elses though.
it seems to me that this complicates things more than the problem it solves.
there are two different textfields in my applications and i set the .delegate property of both of them to: self.
Now i implemented different methods from the uitextfielddelegate protocol but i want to be able to control the two textfields individually. For instance i want the first text field to do something different when editing begins than the second textfield... Is the only solution to this problem to set the assign a different delegate or is there a way to do this with both of the textfield having the same delegate assigned to them?
I hope my question is understandable i tried it to explain the best way that i could.....
thanks in advance!
Set a tag on the textfield on initialization, then check the UITextField object that is passed into the delegate method's tag, then you'll be able to make a differentiation between the two textfields:
#define FIELD_ONE_TAG 1
#define FIELD_TWO_TAG 2
UITextField *textFieldOne = ...
textFieldOne.tag = FIELD_ONE_TAG;
...
UITextField *textFieldTwo = ...
textFieldTwo.tag = FIELD_TWO_TAG;
- (void)textFieldDidBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField {
if(textField.tag == FIELD_ONE_TAG) { //field one
} else {//field two
}
}
UITextField *textFieldOne=.....
UITextField *textFieldTwo=....
- (void)textFieldDidBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField {
if(textField == textFieldOne)
{ // field one code
}else{
//field two code
}
}
have two references of the inserted text views and u can compare them at the delegate methods. Not much needed with tags
What's the best way to determine which UITextField triggers the method -(BOOL)textFieldShouldBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField (or any of the other UITextFieldDelegate methods)? I've seen code like this before:
- (BOOL)textFieldShouldBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField {
if (textField == textFieldCode) {
return YES;
}
return NO;
}
but this only works if I have textFieldCode as an ivar in my class, and in this case I'm just initializing a couple of UITextFields and putting them in a table, so I don't have references to them in the class.
I was thinking that I could use the hash function and store the hashes for each textField somewhere in the class, and then compare textField's hash to the desired hash in the method call, but that seems like kind of a hack.
Since you only have a couple of fields, you can assign unique numbers to the tag properties of each textfield to enable identification.
You can have an iVar of NSArray that will contain all the text fields.
Then just enumerate through it to find out which text field sent the message
I've got a UISearchBar in my interface and I want to customise the behaviour of the the small clear button that appears in the search bar after some text has been entered (it's a small grey circle with a cross in it, appears on the right side of the search field).
Basically, I want it to not only clear the text of the search bar (which is the default implementation) but to also clear some other stuff from my interface, but calling one of my own methods.
I can't find anything in the docs for the UISearchBar class or the UISearchBarDelegate protocol - it doesn't look like you can directly get access to this behaviour.
The one thing I did note was that the docs explained that the delegate method:
- (void)searchBar:(UISearchBar *)searchBar textDidChange:(NSString *)searchText;
is called after the clear button is tapped.
I initially wrote some code in that method that checked the search bar's text property, and if it was empty, then it had been cleared and to do all my other stuff.
Two problems which this though:
Firstly, for some reason I cannot fathom, even though I tell the search bar to resignFirstResponder at the end of my method, something, somewhere is setting it back to becomeFirstResponder. Really annoying...
Secondly, if the user doesn't use the clear button, and simply deletes the text in the bar using the delete button on the keyboard, this method is fired off and their search results go away. Not good.
Any advice or pointers in the right direction would be great!
Thanks!
Found the better solution for this problem :)
- (void)searchBar:(UISearchBar *)searchBar textDidChange:(NSString *)searchText{
if ([searchText length] == 0) {
[self performSelector:#selector(hideKeyboardWithSearchBar:) withObject:searchBar afterDelay:0];
}
}
- (void)hideKeyboardWithSearchBar:(UISearchBar *)searchBar{
[searchBar resignFirstResponder];
}
The answer which was accepted is incorrect. This can be done, I just figured it out and posted it in another question:
UISearchbar clearButton forces the keyboard to appear
Best
I've got this code in my app. Difference is that I don't support 'live search', but instead start searching when the user touches the search button on the keyboard:
- (void)searchBarTextDidBeginEditing:(UISearchBar *)searchBar {
if ([searchBar.text isEqualToString:#""]) {
//Clear stuff here
}
}
Swift version handling close keyboard on clear button click :
func searchBar(searchBar: UISearchBar, textDidChange searchText: String) {
if searchText.characters.count == 0 {
performSelector("hideKeyboardWithSearchBar:", withObject:searchBar, afterDelay:0)
}
}
func hideKeyboardWithSearchBar(bar:UISearchBar) {
bar.resignFirstResponder()
}
You could try this:
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
for (UIView *view in searchBar.subviews){
for (UITextField *tf in view.subviews) {
if ([tf isKindOfClass: [UITextField class]]) {
tf.delegate = self;
break;
}
}
}
}
- (BOOL)textFieldShouldClear:(UITextField *)textField {
// your code
return YES;
}
I would suggest using the rightView and rightViewMode methods of UITextField to create your own clear button that uses the same image. I'm assuming of course that UISearchBar will let you access the UITextField within it. I think it will.
Be aware of this from the iPhone OS Reference Library:
If an overlay view overlaps the clear button, however, the clear button always takes precedence in receiving events. By default, the right overlay view does overlap the clear button.
So you'll probably also need to disable the original clear button.
Since this comes up first, and far as I can see the question wasn't really adequately addressed, I thought I'd post my solution.
1) You need to get a reference to the textField inside the searchBar
2) You need to catch that textField's clear when it fires.
This is pretty simple. Here's one way.
a) Make sure you make your class a , since you will be using the delegate method of the textField inside the searchBar.
b) Also, connect your searchBar to an Outlet in your class. I just called mine searchBar.
c) from viewDidLoad you want to get ahold of the textField inside the searchBar. I did it like this.
UITextField *textField = [self.searchBar valueForKey:#"_searchField"];
if (textField) {
textField.delegate = self;
textField.tag = 1000;
}
Notice, I assigned a tag to that textField so that I can grab it again, and I made it a textField delegate. You could have created a property and assigned this textField to that property to grab it later, but I used a tag.
From here you just need to call the delegate method:
-(BOOL)textFieldShouldClear:(UITextField *)textField {
if (textField.tag == 1000) {
// do something
return YES;
}
return NO;
}
That's it. Since you are referring to a private valueForKey I can't guarantee that it will not get you into trouble.
Best solution from my experience is just to put a UIButton (with clear background and no text) above the system clear button and than connect an IBAction
- (IBAction)searchCancelButtonPressed:(id)sender {
[self.searchBar resignFirstResponder];
self.searchBar.text = #"";
// some of my stuff
self.model.fastSearchText = nil;
[self.model fetchData];
[self reloadTableViewAnimated:NO];
}
Wasn't able to find a solution here that didn't use a private API or wasn't upgrade proof incase Apple changes the view structure of the UISearchBar. Here is what I wrote that works:
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
UITextField* textfield = [self findTextFieldInside:self.searchBar];
[textfield setDelegate:self];
}
- (UITextField*)findTextFieldInside:(id)mainView {
for (id view in [mainView subviews]) {
if ([view isKindOfClass:[UITextField class]]) {
return view;
}
id subview = [self findTextFieldInside:view];
if (subview != nil) {
return subview;
}
}
return nil;
}
Then implement the UITextFieldDelegate protocol into your class and overwrite the textFieldShouldClear: method.
- (BOOL)textFieldShouldClear:(UITextField*)textField {
// Put your code in here.
return YES;
}
Edit: Setting the delegate on the textfield of a search bar in iOS8 will produce a crash. However it looks like the searchBar:textDidChange: method will get called on iOS8 on clear.