NavigationController UIToolbar Change Items - iphone

Question

I want to change the items in my UIToolbar by hiding the toolbar, changing the items (button, fixed space, etc), and revealing it again.
I currently have a button on my UIToolbar that, when pressed, hides the toolbar by calling [[self navigationController]setToolbarHidden:YES animated:YES];.
How can I set these items? Is it possible using interface builder or do I need to hard-code them in?

Answer 1

This is non-standard behavior, but should be doable. You might consider instead of removing and adding new buttons to the existing toolbar, to instead create a different toolbar that gets faded in instead. This would make things easier to code/debug. In general, it just requires less "mess."
To achieve the desired behavior, you could do something like:
float animationDuration = .25;
[UIView animateWithDuration:animationDuration animations:*{
// Remove the old toolbar.
self.oldToolbar.alpha = 0;
// Fade the new toolbar in.
self.newToolbar.alpha = 1;
}];
This example assumes that you have already loaded your other toolbar into the newToolbar property. Let me know if you need further assistance or any explanation.

Answer 2

You can set new items for the toolbar this way:
[toolbar setItems:<new_items_array> animated:YES];
It will also animate the change so you may not need to hide and show it again, which is not a good UI practice in general.

Answer 3

A bit of an odd one... this is a bit hacky but should be perfectly fine:
[UIView animateWithDuration:0.5f animations:^{
// Remove the old toolbar.
self.oldToolbar.alpha = 0;
} completion:^(BOOL finished) {
//add code to change toolbar.
[UIView animateWithDuration:0.5f animations:^{
// Fade the new toolbar in.
self.newToolbar.alpha = 1;
}];
}];