Change UITextField's placeholder text color programmatically - iphone

Question

I have a UITextField with a placeholder. When the user wants to submit the form and he/she hasn't typed anything in the textfield, I would like the placeholder's text color become red. Here are my questions:
Would that go against Apple's User interface guidelines? I don't want my app to be rejected because of such small detail.
How I would do it?
I know I can override the method drawPlaceholderInRect: in a subclass of UITextField. But if I did this, the text would be always red and as I wrote before, I would like it to become red depending on a user defined action.
The only solution I can think of is to use a "default" text for my UITextField (the placeholder's text), display it in light grey as long as the user hasn't typed anything and display it in red when I need it. In other words, I would just mock the placeholder's behavior. But of course, this is not very elegant.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

Just look at this:
Digdog Dig - Change UITextField’s placeholder color without subclassing it
[self.MyTextField setValue:[UIColor darkGrayColor] forKeyPath:#"_placeholderLabel.textColor"];

Answer 2

You can Change the Placeholder textcolor to any color by using the below code. Just try this.
UIColor *color = [UIColor lightTextColor];
YOURTEXTFIELD.attributedPlaceholder = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:#"PlaceHolder Text" attributes:#{NSForegroundColorAttributeName: color}];

Answer 3

like the answer from verklixt but without accessing private api and using UIAppearance:
[[UILabel appearanceWhenContainedIn:[UITextField class], nil] setTextColor:[UIColor darkGrayColor]];
(tested on 5.0 through 7.1)

Answer 4

We can gain access to place holder label using key path,so that we can change color i.e.:
[self.textField setValue:[UIColor **"your color"**]
forKeyPath:#"_placeholderLabel.textColor"];

Answer 5

You can set the placeholder text as a NSAttributedString using this property
NSAttributedString *coloredPlaceholder = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:#"I am a placeholder string" attributes:#{NSForegroundColorAttributeName: [UIColor redColor]}];
[self.textField setAttributedPlaceholder:coloredPlaceholder];

Answer 6

override
-(void) drawPlaceholderInRect:(CGRect)rect {
[[UIColor darkGrayColor] setFill];
[[self placeholder] drawInRect:rect withFont:[UIFont fontWithName:#"Helvetica-Oblique" size:15.0]];
}

Answer 7

when user does not write any thing in textfield. then put this text as a textfield.text text and change font color.

Answer 8

I had some difficulty implementing color change of placeholder, instead I've found another solution which works perfectly for me.
//On button action change color to red
-(void)btnAction
{
// authentication for missing textfields
if ([textField_firstName.text isEqualToString:#""])
{
textField_firstName.textColor=[UIColor redColor];
textField_firstName.text=#"Enter First Name";
}
}
// in the delegate method of UITextField change the following
- (void)textFieldDidBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField
{
//match the following string with above string and change the string to empty string on textfield click
if ([textField_firstName.text isEqualToString:#"Enter First Name" ])
{
textField_firstName.text=#"";
}
//change back to the text color you use
textField_firstName.textColor=[UIColor blackColor];
}