How can I forward touches to a UIButton from another UIView? - iphone

Question

I have a UIButton and a UIView. The View sits above the button, and is larger than the button in size. The view itself is what I want to have accept the touch events, and I'd like to forward them to the button, so that all the normal button visual changes on touch happen.
I can't seem to make this work-- my UIView implements touchesBegan/Moved/Ended/Cancelled, and turns around and calls the same methods on the button with the same arguments. But the button doesn't respond.
I have ensured that the touch methods are in fact being called on the UIView.
Is there something obvious I'm missing here, or a better way of getting the control messages across? Or is there a good reason why this shouldn't work?
Thanks!
[Note: I'm not looking for workarounds for the view+button design. Let's assume that that's a requirement. I'm interested in the notion of controls that are touch proxies for other controls. Thanks.]

Answer 1

Create a ContainerView that contains a button and override hitTest:withEvent: so that it returns the UIButton instance.

Answer 2

Are you sure your methods are being called? If you haven't set userInteractionEnabled=YES, then it won't work.
I've used such touch-forwarding before without problems, though, so I don't know why you're seeing the problems you're seeing.

Answer 3

I use the small class below when I need a larger touch target than the visual size of the button.
Usage:
let button = UIButton(...) // set a title, image, target/action etc on the button
let insets = UIEdgeInsets(top: 5, left: 5, bottom: 5, right: 5)
let buttonContainer = TouchForwardingButtonContainer(button: button, insets: insets) // this is what you add to your view
// a container view for a button that insets the button itself but forwards touches in the inset area to the button
// allows for a larger touch target than the visual size of the button itself
private class TouchForwardingButtonContainer: UIView {
private let button: UIButton
init(button: UIButton, insets: UIEdgeInsets) {
self.button = button
super.init(frame: .zero)
button.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
addSubview(button)
let constraints = [
button.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: topAnchor, constant: insets.top),
button.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: bottomAnchor, constant: -insets.bottom),
button.leftAnchor.constraint(equalTo: leftAnchor, constant: insets.left),
button.rightAnchor.constraint(equalTo: rightAnchor, constant: -insets.right)
]
NSLayoutConstraint.activate(constraints)
}
required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
fatalError("NSCoding not supported")
}
override func hitTest(_ point: CGPoint, with event: UIEvent?) -> UIView? {
return button
}
}