AlertView with textfield - beginner - iphone

Question

UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:#"HELOOOOOOOO" message:#"write a number of text-lines/paragraph here"
delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:#"Dismiss" otherButtonTitles:#"Yes", nil];
UITextField *myTextField = [[UITextField alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(12, 95, 260, 25)];
[myTextField setBackgroundColor:[UIColor whiteColor]];
[alert addSubview:myTextField];
[alert show];
If you look close you will find that the message attribute is quite long. I need this alertview to first display the title, and then my long message, and then the text field and finally the 2 buttons.
But what hapence here, is that since the message is too long, the textfield overlaps with the buttons.
How can i solve this ?

Answer 1

If this is for iPhone, you really can't. The UIAlertView is not meant to handle input. Extended messages are shown with a scroll view but you really should not add a UITextField to it's view hierarchy (for one, it goes against their design standards and your app MAY get nixed!).
In this situation, it would probably be best to use a new UIViewController to handle showing your content.
Again, the only "actions" that UIAlertView is meant to provide is that of the multiple buttons.

Answer 2

Implement this piece of code in your implementation file.
- (void)willPresentAlertView:(UIAlertView *)alertView
{
alertview.frame = CGRectMake(12, 95, 260, 25); //You can set a frame that suits to your needs
}
This delegate - (void)willPresentAlertView:(UIAlertView *)alertView will invoke before showing the alerview, so it is a better way to set frame to your alertview.
For more informations on aleert views:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#DOCUMENTATION/UIKit/Reference/UIAlertView_Class/UIAlertView/UIAlertView.html
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#DOCUMENTATION/UIKit/Reference/UIAlertViewDelegate_Protocol/UIAlertViewDelegate/UIAlertViewDelegate.html#//apple_ref/occ/intf/UIAlertViewDelegate

Answer 3

Actually, it doesn't matter how long your message is. The alert view will always size so it fits.
One way you can fix this is by adding a bunch of \n at the end of your message string, which is equivalent to putting a line break.
EDIT: If your message is so long that it puts it in a UIScrollView, there's nothing you can really do unless you're fine with major hacking (aka, changing the bounds of the UIAlertView, moving each button down, etc.).
A second way works only on iOS 5 and newer. You can set the UIAlertView's alertStyle property to UIAlertViewStylePlainTextInput which will display an alert view with a text field.

Answer 4

Use newline or line break character \n for this:
UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:#"AlertView"message:#"\nhello:.................... \nwrite here.................. \nwrite here....................." delegate:nil cancelButtonTitle:#"Dismiss" otherButtonTitles:#"Yes", nil];
[alert show];
[alert release];
Check this blog post for more help