When to layout subviews of UIViewControllers view? - ios

Question

In my UIViewController class, I'm creating a UIView called safeAreaView and adding it as a subview to the UIViewControllers view property. I'm making it so safeAreaView takes up the entire safe area of the UIViewControllers view property:
- (void) viewDidLoad
{
[self setToolbarWithColor: self.mainToolbarColor animated:NO];
self.tapGestureRecognizer.delegate = self;
self.view.clipsToBounds = YES;
self.view.backgroundColor = [UIColor lightGrayColor];
self.safeAreaView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame: CGRectMake(0, 0, self.view.frame.size.width, self.view.frame.size.height)];
self.safeAreaView.clipsToBounds = YES;
self.safeAreaView.delegate = self;
self.safeAreaView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = NO;
[self.view addSubview: self.safeAreaView];
[self.safeAreaView.leadingAnchor constraintEqualToAnchor: self.view.safeAreaLayoutGuide.leadingAnchor].active = YES;
[self.safeAreaView.trailingAnchor constraintEqualToAnchor: self.view.safeAreaLayoutGuide.trailingAnchor].active = YES;
[self.safeAreaView.topAnchor constraintEqualToAnchor: self.view.safeAreaLayoutGuide.topAnchor].active = YES;
[self.safeAreaView.bottomAnchor constraintEqualToAnchor: self.view.safeAreaLayoutGuide.bottomAnchor].active = YES;
[self.safeAreaView loadSubviews];
}
This works fine, but my problem is, at some point after this during the UIViewControllers initialization cycle, safeAreaView updates to account for the statusbar (it's y position moves up 20 and it decreases in size by 20).
I need to layout some subviews on safeAreaView and I don't know the proper time? If I attach the subviews like above, they have the wrong height. And I can't use some auto layout features on the subviews because there are specific things that I need to do. I've also tried executing the above code in viewWillAppear with no luck.
Wondering if anyone had any suggestions?

Answer 1

You can override - (void)layoutSubviews on your safeAreaView class:
- (void)layoutSubviews {
[super layoutSubviews];
// Manual frame adjustment for non-autolayout participating subviews
// ...
}
Another option would be to override your safeAreaView's class frame setter, so each time the frame of your view changes, you'll get a chance to manually set any subview frames as needed.