UIpickerView populating multiple uitextFields in the same ScrollView - iphone

Question

Hi I am developing an iphone app where I have populated a uipickerview and it works great with one uitextfield. But I have 6 uitextfield I need to populate and I am using the same uipickerview for each UItextfield.
I have working the Ipickerview loaded with array objects and it pops up when each field is touched. The problem is with the code below the UItextfields share the same data from the picker.
I can not figure out how to code so each field gets it own data from the UIPickerView row.
What Am I doing wrong? Any coding suggestions?
Thanks
#implementation BestViewController
-(NSInteger)numberOfComponentsInPickerView: (UIPickerView *)thePickerView
{ return 1; }
-(NSInteger)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)thePickerView numberOfRowsInComponent: (NSInteger)component
{return [list count]; }
-(NSString *)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)thePickerview titleForRow:(NSInteger)row forComponent:(NSInteger)component
{return [list objectAtIndex:row]; }
-(void)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)thePickerview didSelectRow:(NSInteger)row inComponent: (NSInteger)component
{
uitextfield1.text = [list objectAtIndex:row];
utitextfield2.text = [list objectAtIndex:row];
}
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
uitextfield1.inputView = pickerView;
uitextfield2.inputView = pickerView;
list = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
[list addObject:#"a"];
[list addObject:#"b"];
[list addObject:#"c"];
[list addObject:#"d"];
}

Answer 1

You need to get hold of the current first responder and set its text property rather than explicitly setting a particular text field.
So,
-(void)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)thePickerview didSelectRow:(NSInteger)row inComponent: (NSInteger)component
{
// textFields is an NSArray holding each of the textfields that are using the picker as an input view
for (UITextField textField in textFields)
{
if ([textField isFirstResponder])
{
textField.text = [list objectAtIndex:row];
break;
}
}
}
There may be a more elegant way to find the current first responder, this is off the top of my head. textFields could possibly be an IBOutletCollection, but I haven't used those myself so I can't speak with much authority.

Answer 2

Here is how I would do it:
First, define several different pickers. Of course you use the same UIPickerView but you change one property that helps you distinguish them. There is different data for (almost) each text field. One convenient property that Apple designed exactly for this purpose is the tag, an arbitrary integer available to every UIView. You can assign the same tags to the UITextFields.
For example:
#define kFirstTextField 101
#define kSecondTextField 102
#define kThirdTextField 103
//... etc
In the method when the text field is touched:
[myPickerView setHidden:NO]; // or however you show the picker
[myPickerView setTag:textField.tag];
[myPickerView reloadAllComponents];
In the data methods of the picker:
-(NSString *)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)thePickerview
titleForRow:(NSInteger)row
forComponent:(NSInteger)component
{
if (thePickerView.tag==kFirstTextField)
{ return [list1 count]; }
if (thePickerView.tag==kSecondTextField)
{ return [anotherOrTheSameList count]; }
// of course, you can also use a switch statement
return [defaultList count];
}
Do something similar in the titleForRow: method.
Finally, when something is picked, discriminate again by tag:
-(void) pickerView:(UIPickerView *)thePickerview
didSelectRow:(NSInteger)row
inComponent:(NSInteger)component
{
UITextField *field = (UITextField *) [thePickerview.superview viewWithTag:thePickerview.tag];
// this assumes the UIPickerView is the subview of the same view as the UITextFields
if (thePickerview.tag==kFirstTextField)
{ field.text = [list1 objectAtIndex:row]; }
if (thePickerview.tag==kSecondTextField)
{ field.text = [anotherOrTheSameList objectAtIndex:row]; }
// etc.
// alternatively:
field.text = [self pickerView:thePickerview titleForRow:row forComponent:0];
}