I want to make a small area to present some information in the middle of a UIToolbar and was wondering what the best way to do this is.
I need to show some text and a graphic, both of which need to be updated (around every 3 seconds) as new information arrives. The graphic is similar to the iPhone signal strength indicator, so it can be either custom drawn or selected from one of 3 graphics (low, medium, high strength).
I'll probably use initWithCustomView: to create a UIBarButtonItem, although I would like the view to be clickable (to allow the user to change the information shown).
What's the best way to make that view? Can I use a NIB, or do I need to do custom drawing in the view? What's the best way to update the buttons? I'm assuming that I'll have to remake the toolbarItems array each time and set it when the information changes. Is there a cleaner way to do this? Thanks.
Using initWithCustomView: sounds like a good way to go. You can create your custom view any way you want: with a NIB, by drawing it, even using images. It can also have its own subviews. It can be any object that inherits from UIView. (So, if you wanted, you could even make it actionable by using a UIButton, a custom UIControl, or a custom UIView with a gesture recognizer attached.)
You shouldn't have to remake toolbarItems (or, for that matter, do anything with it after you've added all your button items) if you just keep a pointer to your custom view UIBarButtonItem. It could be an instance variable. Then, to update the custom view, you could access it as you would any other view. I've never actually tried this, but I can't see any problem with doing it.
You sound like you had it mostly figured out. Hope this is helpful.
I needed the same solution and was hoping for some code examples from you. So I ended up doing it all in IB and the steps are here as follows:
Create UItoolbar in IB with no Items. (A Bar Button Item will be added again once you add the UIView)
Add UIView as subview of UIToolbar
Add UILabels to subview of UIView that is already a subview of the UIToolbar.
Create IBOutlets from UIToolbar, UIView and each UILabel and then you can reference the labels in your app.
I did set the backgrounds to clearColor so the text appears on top of UIToolbar without any box or borders.
And the text updates dynamically which was the desired outcome.
Hope this helps someone as this has been eluding me for a while.
Related
I was googling for a while and I found similar problems but when the custom View is inside a ScrollView, but that is not my case.
I have a custom view that consists of a UILabel behind a UITextField, so I can animate that label later.
The problem is that when I add a View in my ViewController and in the Identity Inspector I set the Class as my custom class, when I use the application the UITextField within my custom view does not receive the touches well and it takes time to gain focus and therefore to open the keyboard. The strange thing is that if I move that same arrangement of views to my main ViewController in Storyboard everything works fine. Why doesn't it do it when I place it using the described method?
I plans to reuse this custom view a lot, so putting logic and views in each ViewController is not an option.
Thanks in advance
Well, the problem was in the constraints of the container UIView. That means, the UIView in my main ViewController. The Height of the UIView was a little bit smaller than the space required for my custom view, so although my custom view seemed to draw correctly, it was not receiving the gestures correctly. The solution was simply increase the height to the correct value occupied by my custom View. Thanks a lot!
Here is the requirement of my application:
There is a calendar type view which will show Date, Day, Total work hours of that day. What I need, when I click anywhere in that particular square block then it redirects my page to a new view.
I am thinking to should add multiple button and UIView on that button.
That can solve my problem but it is little bit problematic. How should I to do this?
Please look at UITapGestureRecognizer for your view. I think this is what you're looking for.
Here is a link to a tutorial on using UITapGestureRecognizer
Create a subclass of UIControl and a XIB with a UIView in it. Set the class type for the UIView to your new UIControl (not the file owner but the UIView). Then in the UIControl in the initWithCoder: method create the display component and add to view. Then set up you properties that you need to populate those controls.
To use this new control place a UIView where you want it on your screen and size it. Change its class type (in the inspector) to your new subclass. Now you can add outlets and actions to this view just like you would a UIButton. The only downfall is can't set the display controls from the inspector, you'll have to do that in the program. But the good side is you get a similar interface to a button and you can make it look anyway you like.
Hope this helps.
i often do not split view and controller related things correctly.
should i always subclass a uiview if i want custom uibuttons and backgrounds in my app and add style related stuff in my view or should i handle this in my controller? or probably subclass a uibutton?
what about alignings? when should i subclass a uiview, add buttons to it and align then or handle this in my controller?
thanks for your hints!
please leave some comments if something is unclear.
Should i always subclass a uiview if I want custom uibuttons and
backgrounds in my app and add style related stuff in my view
If your need are basic, you coan just insert wanted elements as subviews of your view without having to subclass anything. Buttons and views have enough properties to handle those simple needs. But everything depends on what are those needs.
Should i handle this in my controller? or probably subclass a
uibutton?
Subclassing UIButton for UIButton behaviour is not a bad idea :-) But as said before, what do you need as special behaviour ? A special image : there is a property for that. A special reaction on events, manage it into the controller on IBActions. A UIButton with UFO behaviours, ok, let's subclass it.
What about alignings? when should i subclass a uiview, add buttons to
it and align then or handle this in my controller?
Hmmm... I guess never. This can (should) be done in the controller. The controller controls the whole UIItems. So if you want to align one item regarding another, do it into the controller. If you want to align special graphics or text that is displayed into the button, sublass it and manage that in the drawRect method.
I have a view with a UIScrollView, UIImageView for a background, and a UITextView. I have created several other views just like this and they all come out okay - with a background image and scrollable text but for some reason, now I can't make that work. Either my image overlaps all of the text so that I can't read it or the UITextView default background (white) shows up so that the user can't see the background image. What could be causing this problem?
Do you use Interface Builder or build the views hierarchy in code?
In both cases you should make sure that the order of your views is correct.
In IB the view that you want to appear on top of all the rest has to be under the rest of the views.
In code, make sure that the text view is the last to be added to the hierarchy.
You could also use the next code in order to check if this is the problem:
[self.view bringSubviewToFront:textView];
Okay, it must have had something to do with choosing the delegate. I can't say that I completely understand how I fixed it but it had to do with declaring the delegate in IB.
I'm trying to figure out a best way to implement the picture-editing capability shown in the native address book app on iPhone.
On the built-in address book, this is how the picture looks like before editing:
qkpic.com/2f7d4 http://qkpic.com/2f7d4
And after clicking edit, notice how "Edit" overlay is added and the image becomes clickable:
qkpic.com/fb2f4 http://qkpic.com/fb2f4
What would be the best way to implement something like this? Should I make the image a button from the beginning and have tapping disabled at first? If so, what steps are required to add an overlay/label to the image (in above example, gray border + the text "Edit" is added)
The easiest way is to use Interface Builder, create a container view, then add a UIImageView and UILabel as subviews to it. You would position and style the text and the image but set the UILabel to hidden. Make the whole container view respond to touches. It's easy to do since UIView is derived from UIResponder so all you have to do is override touchesEnded. Whenever you want to change the text label, just set the UILabel to hidden=NO.
There's more to it, however. Notice how the image has rounded corners? You'll want to override the UIImageView's drawRect method to implement a custom drawing routine to do that. There's lots of sample code around and it wasn't part of your original question so I'll stop here.