Do CALayers block Touch Events in underlying views? - iphone

I have an application with a view containing several subviews. The subviews did not implement any touchesbegins logic. The Superview implemented all touchesbegins logic and manipulated each subview respectively if it was touched (determined by hit testing).
I have since been converting my subviews to layers. My problem now is that if I touch a layer, the hosting view of the superlayer never gets the touchesbegins method called. However if I touch the background, the touchesbegin method fires.
I understood from documentation that layers cannot handle events, if this is so why would it block events to the hosting view?
Thanks for any help, can't get my head around this.
-Corey

I found the problem... I was releasing the sublayers I was creating using [CALayer layer]. Since I didn't have control of them, I shouldn't have been managing them.

CALayers should not block touch events. Is your userInteractionEnabled flag set in the hosting view (sounds like it is, if you're getting SOME touches)? Is it inside a UIScrollView, which may be doing its own touch-handling.

What class is your touchesBegan method in?
I was having a similiar problem because my touchesBegan method was in a UIView subclass.
After moving the method to a UIViewController subclass, my problem was fixed.
Try doing that.

Related

How do I enable user interaction in two overlapped UIViews?

I have two overlapping UIViews, and I want both to respond to user touches. At the moment, only the last view that was loaded responds.
How do I get both to respond to touch events?
you could provide a simple protocol which sends all touch events from the first view to the view in the background. So let the view in the background be a delegate of the first view would be a very simple approach.
Otherwise override the method touchesBegan:withEvent: of the view in the front and call the corresponding method of the view in the background.
Cheers,
anka
If you call touchesBegan/Moved/Ended on super after you handle them I think you will achieve what you want.
Finally, since I don't need that both responds at the same time, I made a workaround. I used the methods bringSubViewToFront: and sendSubViewToBack:. This methods made the work.

A question about CALayer and UIView

The object is to implement a semi-transparent layer which would slid out to collect user response when needed. The semi-transparent layer would have some icons on it for the user to choose from. Currently I am using a CALayer object which seems ok and it has some build in animation behavior.
But the problem is CALayer does not response to any touch events at all. Now I am thinking that I should be using a UIView instead. UIView inherits from UIResponder, so its objects are naturally capable of responding to users' events.
It's a decision between UIView and CALayer. For the CALayer, I have done quite a bit of work on it and it looks quite ok except about the touch response that has to be added. Or should I use a UIView as subview instead (since it has build-in touch respond) ?
Hope that somebody knowledgable on this could help ...
In order to respond to user interaction, the best way is to use a UIView. You could probably get it to work without one, but I wouldn't recommend it.
As for integrating your existing layer with the UIView, I'd create a subclass of UIView and override its +layerClass method to return the Class of your custom CALayer. Alternatively, if you're not using a custom CALayer subclass (and there generally isn't a real need to create your own), you can do your custom drawing inside the UIView's -drawLayer:inContext: method.

Rearrange subviews in UIScrollView like App-Icons on Home-Screen

Hej folks,
I got a question to you: I got a UIScrollView in my application containing numerous subviews (all direct subclasses of UIView). Now I want to give the user the possibility to rearrange these subviews inside the scrollview. Is there anyway to make it look like the way we all can change the icons on our homescreen (auto-rearrange)? I would really appreciate any help!
Thanks in advance,
Tim
Unless you use some custom tool kit (I'm not sure there exists a custom tool kit or API to achieve this), I think you should create them from scratch.
I'm also creating very similar thing you said. In an UIScrollView instance, I added small subviews and can order them only vertically by dragging. Also, I can take any subview to the outside of an UIScrollView instance. (a little bit tricky)
There are two ways to build them. (small subviews == icons)
1a) Implement touch events(gestureRecognizer or touchesBegan, Moved, Ended, Canceled) in a main subview of UIScrollView that contains many small subviews.
1b) Implement touch events in each small subview.
I chose 1b because I want to use small subviews not only in UIScrollView but also anywhere in my program. But with 1b, it was a little bit hard to prevent multitouch among these small views. Also I felt that with 1b, touch events in small subviews are more free from the complicated responder chains of an application.
2) Create a NSMutableArray instance that contains a list of small subviews.
3) Implement a function that displays a NSMutableArray instance onto a main view of an UIScrollView instance by enumerating it.
4) Implement a function that enumerates a NSMutableArray instance and checks whether a current touch position of small subview is in a frame of any small subview of a NSMutableArray. (or checks whether a current moving small subview's frame interesects a frame of any small subview) You can use CGRectContainsPoint or CGRectContainsRect functions from CGGeomtery.
5a) If yes, then you can just change frame of every small subview of a NSMutableArray.
5b) If the user releases a finger outside of frame of any small subview, then do nothing.
Simply using block-based animation methods(iOS4 and later) or begin/commit animation methods, you can create them like a home screen.
Very Good Example For Scrollview with Pagecontrol like iphone home Screen
https://github.com/jarada/myLauncher

UIScrollView event handling

I'm trying to make my own custom UIScrollView for some reason. The question is, is it possible to exactly mimic the event handling behavior of UIScrollView including 'delayed content touches' and 'cancellable content touches'? That is, the custom scroll view should delay handling the event until it can determine if scrolling is the intent, and it should also be able to cancel its subviews' touches later. The problem is as follows:
1) hitTest: should return immediately so I can't delay the determination of the touch owner.
2) We can't cancel a touch event later programmatically. There's no such api.
3) I tried to override the sendEvent: method, but it didn't help. Having to call [super sendEvent:] will send events to unintended views. Moreover, hit test has been already done when sendEvent: was called and we can't alter the value of UITouch.view later.
So again the question is, is it possible to make a custom UIScrollView including it's touch handling behavior without using UIScrollView?
Thanks in advance!
One thing to keep in mind is that the gestureRecognizers (Pan and Zoom) that are used for regular UIScrollViews are private properties until iOS 5.0 comes out. I suppose when they are public you could transfer them to your own scroll view.

Touch events not working on UIViews inside UIScrollView

I have a series of UIViews inside a UIScrollView, and the UIViewControllers for those views are not receiving the touch events. If I take the views out of the scroll view then it works.
I have enabled userInteraction on the views but it's still not working!
This must be possible and I'd be really grateful if someone could point me in the right direction!
Thanks,
Mike
Do the views have their own touch handlers, or are you relying on the viewcontroller to get the touches? Depending on how you have set things up, the views may be handling the touches without passing through to the view controller.
I have overcome this issue by overriding the loadView method of the view controller, and setting the view's instance variable to a simple UIView subclass which passes on the touches.
Check what you are returning in scrollview delegate method view for scrollin in scroll view.
As mahboudz mentioned - check if you have any custom handler for touch event. If not, please have one. Its far more relief to do whatever you want to do with your view. Check out Apples sample app from scrollViewSuite. They have tapDetectingImageView delegate. I used the same in my app it worked great! Hope this helps!
You may find this post useful. It's an example of a pretty clean way of intercepting events.
Have touch handlers for view for which you want to receive touch events and that will work.