The iPad virtual keyboard will disappear in one of (at least) these 3 circumstances:
If the control (say, a UITextField) programmatically resigns first responder.
If the user taps the "dismiss keyboard" button in the lower right.
If the user connects to the USB/keyboard dock peripheral.
In all cases, I get the UIKeyboardWillHideNotification.
The problem is that the first two cases are generally equivalent-- in other words, the user is done editing the text field. But in the third case, the text field is still being edited, just from another input source.
The problem is detecting the difference between cases 2 and 3. All I get in both cases is UIKeyboardWillHideNotification. In case 2, I generally want to also lock the edit control and commit the value. In case 3, I generally want to do nothing and allow editing to continue.
But how can I tell the difference?
Apple's Pages app seems to be able to distinguish this on document-title renaming.
I would look at the UIKeyboardBoundsUserInfoKey passed with the notification. The physical keyboard probably has empty bounds.
It sounds like you're just trying to figure out when a user is done editing. You could listen for the UITextFieldTextDidEndEditingNotification notification for cases 1 and 2.
A much simpler solution would be couldn't you just check against the editing property of UITextField to determine if it's still supposed to be editing or not? I don't have a physical keyboard, so I have no way to test this. I'm just guessing.
Here's a link to the documentation on that property: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UITextField_Class/Reference/UITextField.html#//apple_ref/occ/instp/UITextField/editing
I'm very curious to know if this works or not... :)
Related
Sorry if the questions is asked/answered already, or if my title is poorly worded.
I am currently writing an iPhone app, and have considered a useful tool for debugging. I would like to write a method that just prints variables and other info that I want. That part is simple and all, but I want this to be called by keystroke.
For now I have been just adding NSLog()'s to viewDidLoad or to other button methods to check if my variables are being set properly, but it's becoming tedious and the code is long so I tend to forget about some and spend a lot of time looking for them haha.
I just want one method that I can go to to write my NSLog()'s, and have that method call whenever I hit 'space' or something of that sort.
Can this be done?
Thanks!
-SF
It's pretty hard to do, you need to have a hidden text field that you keep in focus, hide the software keyboard for it, then listen on its delegate methods for changing text.
An alternative would trigger the code inside applicationWillResignActive: which gets called on application hiding, notification center showing, or double home press.
I have one question, may be it is very simple, but I do not know about this nothing...
For example, I have an application, application with textfield, I want to know two things.
First: Is possible to switch keyboard when application in runtime?
Second: how I can switch type of keyboard(Russian, English, Swedish, etc.) in my application*?
*-without going to Settings->General->Keyboard->add new keyboard.
Not sure about changing languages (I did find this other post about it: change input source language programmatically OSx), but changing the keyboard is pretty easy. Here is a one line example:
textField.keyboardType = UIKeyboardTypeURL;
Take a look at the UITextInputTraits protocol reference for more info. Then the question comes in where to implement this. I am assuming that you want to check conditions right before the keyboard comes up, you may have to implement UITextFieldDelegate protocol (and maybe using the field's tag to see which field the cursor is in).
Hope this helps.
I have a UITextFieldDelegate that does a whole bunch of validation on user input to determine whether or not they should be allowed to end editing. In one particular example, it is not valid to leave the field blank.
Right now I'm using textField:shouldChangeCharactersInRange:replacementString: to validate the text input after each edit by the user.
The problem is this: if the user clears the field (with the little 'x' button), the validation code goes into "invalid" mode and prevents the user from navigating away until they have entered valid text. If the user then shakes the phone to get the old text back, shouldChangeCharactersInRange is not called again and the delegate stays in the "invalid" state instead of recognizing that everything is fine again.
Not sure if I'm using it correctly, but it seems like the built-in UITextFieldDelegate machinery is not able to cope with text changes due to undo / redo.
What's the best way to achieve proper validation in this scenario? Do I really need to subclass UITextField in order to implement motionEnded:withEvent:? Seems like the edit-handling stuff in UITextField should really be independent of whether the user actually typed it or it happened due to undo, so would be bummed if I actually had to go that route.
Hook up a method to the UIControlEventEditingChanged event ("Editing Changed" in IB -- not "Value Changed").
This appears to fire whenever/however the text field changes.
So I'm putting my app's preference settings into the Settings app. One of the settings is an edit text field (PSTextFieldSpecifier). When touched, the keyboard dutifully appears, I can make the edits, but when I press Return....nothing. Well, the editing is completed, but the keyboard remains. I see no way to make the keyboard go away.
I also notice this same behavior in other Settings panes, including those from Apple. Do I assume correctly that this is just standard behavior and I need to just accept the fact that my Settings table has now been reduced to half size, and just deal?
Furthermore, I gather there is no approved way to have a "rich" child pane display, such as that seen in Settings->General->About->Legal? Or a way to do what appears to be a -presentModalViewController, a la Settings->General->Passcode Lock?
Unfortunately you have to deal with it. And there's nothing you can do in code, at least for now.
That's a bug that hasn't been fixed for a while. You should fill out a bug report.
You need to a call to resignFirstResponder ... e.g.
- (BOOL)textFieldShouldReturn:(UITextField*)tf
{
[tf resignFirstResponder];
return YES;
}
I am writing an iPhone application which requires the user to enter several values that may contain a decimal point (currency values, percentages etc.). The number of decimal places in the values varies. The problem is that the number pad does not contain a key for entering a decimal point.
When I lock my phone, the number pad that comes up to enter a passcode has a custom button to make an emergency call (as seen in the following screenshot):
Numberpad with custom button http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/6426/photoejg.jpg
Does anyone know how to create a number pad with a decimal point button or a custom button (like the emergency call button above)?
Thanks.
There's no Apple-approved way to edit the existing keyboard. If you want them to allow it, file a feature request.
That said, it just so happens that in most applications the keyboard (instance of UIKeyboard) is a separate UIWindow, and you can iterate over the windows in the application and start adding custom subviews that respond to the appropriate touch actions. Find it by iterating over [[UIApplication sharedApplication] windows] and checking to see if the description contains the string UIKeyboard. For more info on this method and some sample code, see this answer.
Another approach is to create your own custom view and build a keyboard from scratch. Be careful if you do this, though, as it requires a lot of manual work, not only in creating the keyboard and getting the touch behavior to match Apple's, but also in any control you add that would bring up the regular keyboard - you'll need to redirect things like becomeFirstResponder to show your own keyboard, rather than Apple's.
Edit: As ZaBlanc pointed out, newer versions of iOS have a way to do this with the inputView and inputAccessoryView properties. See the UIResponder class reference for details.
set UIKeyboardType to UIKeyboardTypeDecimalPad
Available in iOS 4.1 and later.
Create a UIViewController that contains a UIView with a bunch of buttons. Now your keyboard can have whatever you want on it.