CALayer and UIView display order - iphone

I have a CATiledLayer within a UIView and the UIView also contains a subview.
How can I make sure that the subview is always drawn above the layer?
Most of the time I get the tile layer covering the subview.

By default all layers (hence views) added in the last are drawn on the top. You can change the default with -insertSublayer:below: and similar methods:
[view.layer insertSublayer:tiledLayer below:thatSubview.layer]

Related

Blurry CALayer when using inside UIScrollView

I have a CustomView, inside which I have added my custom CALayer ([self.layer addSublayer:...]) which I subclassed to do some custom drawing in drawInContext method of my layer. I draw there simple paths.
The CustomView is added as subview to UIScrollView.
The problem is when I zoom, the content doesn't get redrawn so the path looks blurry.
How to fix that? I tired to call setNeedsDisplay on the layer and sublayer when zoom ends, but without results.
Example of blurry path and correct one after zooming:

UIScrollView inside a CALayer

I'm developing some kind of card game in which my view objects (cards, etc) are all CALayers. These objects are added as sublayers of a mainBoard (a CALayer), which, in turn, is a sublayer of the [UIView layer] property of my mainView. Everything is Ok, I can do hit testing to verify which layer is being touched through the touchesBegan:withEvent: callback of the mainView class normally, and so on.
However, I need to have a scroll inside my mainBoard to show "bigger" CALayers, so I tried first adding the "bigger" CALayer inside a CAScrollLayer, but I noticed that the CAScrollLayer doesn't really scroll (doesn't handle user input, neither draws scrollbars). So, the workaround would be to add an UIScrollView directly to the mainView UIView. The UIScrollView scrolls perfectly, until I try to add the "bigger" layer to it, by using [scrollView.layer addSublayer:<bigger layer>].
Does anyone has any idea of how I can have "scrollable" objects inside a CALayer?
Thanks!
nacho4d pointed the answer for my question.
Replying to mark: the "bigger" layer (a layer whose bounds is bigger than the area available in the screen (and so, needs to be contained in a scrollable area)).
The solution was to first wrap the "bigger" layer in a UIView:
UIView *wrapperView = ...
[wrapperView.layer addSublayer:<bigger_layer>];
afterwards, I can add the view as a subview of the UIScrollview:
[<uiscrollview> addSubview:wrapperView];
// set up scrolling properties
<uiscrollview>.contentSize = <bigger_layer>.frame.size;
The problem was that I was trying to add the "bigger" layer as a sublayer of the UIScrollview directly, instead, wrapping it in a UIView and adding it as a subview worked.
Thanks

UIScrollView and CALayers

I have a custom UIView that is composed entirely of CALayers.
In the awakeFromNib method it creates and sets all the CALayers into their appropriate positions (CAGradientLayer, several CATextLayers, and a few custom CALayer subclasses). The custom UIView does not override the drawRect: method because there's no drawing done directly into the view (all of the drawing is done in the sublayers).
So I took this view and embedded it in a UIScrollView. The problem? No scroll bars appear and the view does not scroll. The view is clearly larger than the bounds of the scroll view, and instead of allowing me to scroll, it just cuts off at the scroll view bounds.
What could be wrong here?
You have to set the scrollView's contentSize.

Drawing a shadow below a UIScrollView (that scrolls a UIView)

My setup is a UIScrollView in the center of the screen (on the iPhone - like 300x400 positioned in the center) that contains a UIView of the same width, so it scrolls it vertically. In this UIView i draw custom subviews with labels etc (it's a scoreboard with various colors).
What i'd like to have is some shadow below my UIScrollView, so that the whole scrolling scoreboard floats over my background.
I have found this nice post
How do I draw a shadow under a UIView?
I use this code in my ScrollView subclass but it doesn't work for me. Maybe because I don't draw the actual shapes in the ScrollView's drawRect: (since they are drawn on the UIView).
Also I guess that in order to have the View scroll in the ScrollView and the shadow of the ScrollView outside the scrolling area, I guess I should extend the "bounds" of the ScrollView, right?
It's not quite clear to me what you're asking but, if you want the scrollView contents to scroll over a static image you simply need to add a UIView (or more likely a UIImageView) to your superview and then add your UIScrollView to that. If you set he background colour of the UIScrollView to be celarColor, the background image will show through - so you have a view heirarchy like:
UIWindow
UIView <----- your background here
UIScrollView
Scrolling subviews <----- high score table here
If you draw your highscore table in the scrolling subviews using CoreGraphics, the answer in the question you linked to will also work.
How about explicitly filling the entire self.bounds rectangle in your scroll view subclass' drawRect: method before calling super?
Another idea is to put the scroll view inside of another view which does the shadow drawing.

How to set order of display in Objective-C

I'm trying to mix between UIImageView drawing and line drawing using CGContext path draw commands, but the draw order is not correct.
I need to draw the path on top of the images but get the reverse.
The way I implemented it:
Setting UIImage within a UIImageView and adding the UIImageView as a subview of the main view.
Next I use the 'drawRect' (refresh draw function) to draw the path using the UIKit CGContextStrokePath function.
Now, other than using the Context image draw function directly (I want to avoid that because I reuse my image resources by several UIImageViews), is there a way to set the order correctly (a flag set maybe)?
The problem again is that lines/path are drawn before the UIImageViews (which are drawn automatically via the connection to the parent UIView), hence they are not visible over the images / UIImageViews.
Thanks
You can try implementing this through Quartz Core using layers (see the CALayer class documentation). Basically, you can have layers hierarchies. You associate each UIView to a different layer, then the layers are rendered together providing a single, composite layer. Besides, you can also apply transforms and animations to layers.
You need to import the QuartzCore header and do something like
#import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>
UIView *mainView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame...
UIImageView *imageView = ...
CaLayer *mainViewLayer = mainView.layer;
[mainViewLayer addSubLayer: imageView.layer];
Then, when mainView appears on the screen, all the sublayers are merged together and rendered on screen. What happens is that each view renders its layer, while mainViewLayer is rendered merging together the two layers.
Let me know if this works for you.
You can have as many layers as you like. You can create an arbitrary hierarchi by using the CALayer methods
– addSublayer:
– removeFromSuperlayer
– insertSublayer:atIndex:
– insertSublayer:below:
– insertSublayer:above:
– replaceSublayer:with:
The contents of the topmost (in this case, last added) subview will appear in front of all other views. If you add an image subview and draw into its parent view, the image will appear in front of any drawing you do in that parent view.
You should draw into a new view you add to the main view only after adding the UIImageView.
You could also use bringSubviewToFront: and sendSubviewToBack: to manually reorder views if you need to.
(From your post, it's unclear which view you're drawing into, but I assume you're drawing into that main parent view which would explain this behavior.)