How can I space UITextField leading and training edges in a UIStackView? - ios

I have two UITextFields in a vertical UIStackView. I want their leading and trailing edges to be 20 points away from the edge of the UIStackView. However I cannot figure how to do this without conflicting constraints. The conflicting constraint errors don't make sense to me as they say that I have two constraints that conflict but as you can see I only added one constraint for each UITextField.
Here is my situation in images:

Here is one option...
Embed your UITextFields inside UIViews and let the stack view stretch the Views to the full width. Then constrain the text fields to their "containing" views.
Adding a Height constraint to the text fields, and then "pinning" the top and bottom to the top / bottom of the containing view will also get the view to "auto-size" to the heigh of the text field.
For clarity, I set the background color of the containing views to "Cantaloupe" so you can see them, and the blue rectangle is just a plain UIView (as you showed in the Document Outline in your image), with a Height constraint of 80.

Related

How to use auto layout to resize views in a table view cell?

I have a cell in which I place four buttons and four labels. Each button gets assigned a picture with width 50 and height 50. Furthermore, all buttons have a corresponding label describing what they're intended for.
My objective is to have the buttons and labels resize to keep the buttons' and labels' aspect ration intact while the screen dimension changes on different devices. I have been playing with auto layout changing the hugging and compression to achieve this but haven't been successful yet. Any help would be much appreciated...
I think you should take a look at a UIStackView, because this seems exactly as a use case for stack. Just put each pair button/label in a stack, and then all four pairs into a horizontal stack, which you constraint to the cell itself. You should be able to handle all you need just by configuring the stack’s properties (axis, distribution, alignment, spacing).
Embed your button and label into a view. Set the width of this view equal widths to content view and change the multiplier value to 1:4. This will adjust the widths of the views according to superview. Also, set the top and bottom constraint to 0 for this view.
Provide center align y-axis constraint to button after setting the width and height constraint to 50. Set its top constraint to a value you deem fit.
Set labels's leading and trailing constraint to a value like 8. Choose center alignment for text. Also, provide top constraint to buttona nd bottom to its superview.
Copy the view and paste to create the three views and provide them equal widths constraint to the first view. Also, provide their leading, trailing, top and bottom constraints.
Here are a fast tutorial in how to achieve that:
1-
2- completion of the first Gif:
Note you can achieve the same output using a UIStackView

Center multiple UILabels on a line

I want to horizontally center multiple UILabels - as a group - on a line in Interface Builder. One the straight view controller i could not figure out how to do this. I read comments about place the UILabels in a View and then centering the view in the view controller. When I tried this, overtime I said to update frames in the interface builder, the View would be resized down to nothing. (i.e. its height and width would be set to 0 by IB). I need to know how to get this to work in interface builder.
An example of a line containing multiple labels I want horizontally centered is below. The braces simply indicate the start and end of each label and are not art of the text. The <- 6 -> is meant to indicate the trailing space from label 1 to label 2 is 6
Label 1 Label 2
[Rating: 0.0]<- 6 ->[Distance: 125.34 Kilometers]
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Here is an EXACT example of what I have done and it does not work:
Create a new view controller in IB
Place a page label at the top of the page centered horizontally and aligned to the top of the layout guide.
Add a view with the following constraints on the page:
Now add two labels to the view with the following constraints:
Once this is done I get the following error and updating the frames will cause it to be give a height and width of 0
Here is what the page looks like in IB:
I need the height and width of the view to size automatically so that I have put a multiline label in the view and have all the contents of the view treated as a group and centered on the page.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Here is a snapshot of a working set of all the constraints on an abbreviated layout that produces an always-centered view that automatically resizes with the child views (i.e., as the content of any label changes, the view grows or shrinks around it).
Important to your solution, the view has neither a height nor width constraint; its size is constrained entirely by its descendant constraints.
The key is that every component has a direct or indirect constraint from which its size and position are specified or can be inferred. For example, in order for the view to infer its width, the child labels must have a leading space constraint on the first label, a trailing space constraint on the last label, and a horizontal space constraint between interior labels. Those constraints plus the contents of the labels allow the width of the view to be inferred ... and force the view to dynamically conform to that width.
The same applies for the view's height. For example, you can specify the top and bottom space of just one label, or all of them. If just one, the remaining labels can be vertically aligned with it (see "Align Center Y to: Label1" in the screenshot).

Swift - UIScrollView Scrolls Partially

My problem is slightly different from other's 'Swift UIScrollView' problems when using auto layout:
Problem:
Unlike others, when I run my app, it scrolls. My problem is that the scroll cuts off the bottom 20-30% of the content. I can pull to see the buttons did build and are down there, but when I let it go the scroll snaps back to a false bottom which cuts off my content!!! I've been trying, for days, to fix it to scroll the entire height but it continues to cut off!!
Description of app:
I used auto layout to layout 6 buttons and labels. Each button a rectangular image, with a label directly beneath it. (sorry, the site won't let me post pictures!)
I have my views arranged like this:
MainView > ScrollView > ContentView > Buttons & Labels
I have my contentView pinned to my ScrollView and my ScrollView pinned to my MainView. My buttons and labels all have constraints that are building correctly, to create a list that looks like:
Rectangular button
Label beneath it
Spacing
Rectangular button
Label beneath it
Spacing
Etc.
Can anyone tell me why I can't scroll the full length of the view?
Your description of how your items are constrained is vague, so I'm going to list all of the constraints you need to make this work. Then you can compare what you have to what you need and adjust accordingly.
Your ScrollView should be pinned on all 4 sides to the MainView. (This isn't absolutely necessary. You can constrain your ScrollView however you want, but make sure it can grow as the device and/or orientation changes).
Your ContentView should be pinned on all 4 sides to the ScrollView with offsets of 0.
Since you want your ScrollView to scroll vertically only, constrain the width of the ContentView to the width of the ScrollView using an Equal Widths constraint. To do this, in the Document Outline view, Control-drag from your ContentView to your ScrollView and select Equal Widths from the pop up.
The height of ContentView will be set by the sum total height of everything in it. In order for this to work, your topmost button needs to be pinned to the top of the ContentView, all of your buttons and labels should be pinned to their nearest neighbors, and the bottommost label should be pinned to the bottom of the ContentView. In addition, all of your buttons and labels should have constraints for their widths and heights. I would suggest setting an explicit width constraint and explicit height constraint for your buttons and centering them horizontally in the ContentView. For your labels, set an explicit height constraint and pin the left and right edges to the ContentView.
If you have these constraints and no other ones, your ContentView will be properly sized.
Using contentView, like you said, usually fixes the issue. So chances are you need to take a second look at your contraints. Maybe try this solution in a clean/new project to see that it works. (it does work). My guess would be that some of your constraints conflict each other.
Otherwise I think it would be a good idea to setContentSize of your scrollView in your viewDidLoad.
Another hack would be to place 2 UI objects with their alphas set to zero on the right top corner and left bottom corner. This would hint scrollView to set its contentSize.

Can't align 5 items in a row using autolayout

I am struggling to align 5 items in a row using auto layout as shown in the storyboard.
I can align the 3 items highlighted below but the 2 inbetween just don't want to align.
I have tried pinning the items to the buttons next to each of the items and setting the size but they refuse to align properly. Have also tried setting the 2 misplaced buttons to the leading and trialing container as shown below but these still do not align properly (or even closely).
Am I doing something wrong?
The way to do this is with spacer views. You need to add a UIView between each of your views and give them each horizontal spacing constraints to the view on either side. You'll need to edit these constraints so they are between the spacer's leading or trailing edge, and the view's centerX (the constant value should be 0). Give the spacers equal widths (but no fixed width), a fixed height, and a clear background color. You views on the left and right sides should have constraints to their closest edge, but the center view shouldn't have a centerX constraint (it's not needed). This will cause the views to be equally spaced in all screen sizes, and in both orientations.
Your best bet might be to create another superview (UIView) within which your button items are located. Then you can align your buttons more fluidly within that superview that encapsulates only those buttons rather than just wrestling with the constraints within the card superview, which it seems you are doing. Just make the background of that UIView clear, place the buttons on it, and it will appear exactly the same and you'll have a better way to anchor your views. This could also come in handy when you're targeting the functionality of just those buttons so you can grab them from the subviews of the button bar superview.

Views are Horizontally and Vertically Ambiguous with complex layout

I have a UIViewController on my storyboard that has 2 subviews side-to-side horizontally. I added constraints to fix the leading and trailing edges to a constant (20 pts), and another constraint to keep the widths equal. If I assume the following, it should be possible to calculate what the width of each subview will need to be:
the subviews do not overlap
there are no other views present (horizontally, at least)
the width of the screen (the superview) is known
However, XCode gives me a warning that my views are horizontally ambiguous. I'm guessing that means that XCode is not making one of these assumptions, but which one is it? And is there a way for me to instruct XCode to make that assumption?
EDIT: Okay, played with it a bit and got the warning to go away, but it looks like it's not making the first assumption - it's just setting each subview's width to superview.width - 40, and happily burying one view underneath the other. So the question is how to I stop them from overlapping?
EDIT 2: Okay, my actual screen is a lot more complicated than my simple example. Here's what I got:
So in this setup I have 4 views that are vertically and horizontally staggered.  I want the blue, red, and purple views to all be the same subview.frame.size.width = superview.width - 60. The blue and purple are lined up in the left column, and the red is alone in the right column, and all the gaps (between the two columns and between each column and it's nearest edge) are at a constant (20 pts). These 3 tables have a variable height, which I will be setting programmatically as described in James's answer here. At the bottom is a pink view that stretches the width of the screen (minus gaps), and sits at a constant 20 pts below either the purple or the red view, whichever is lower (which I'm attempting to do by giving it a spacing constraint of >= 20 to each view, and I hope that it will pick exactly 20 for one of them). Since all of the heights are dynamic and may not necessarily fit on the screen at the same time, I made their superview a UIScrollView instead of the normal UIView.
When all is said and done, I'm still getting a warning that all 4 of my views are horizontally ambiguous, and that the pink bar is vertically ambiguous. I think it's having trouble realizing what is supposed to go next to what, which is why it thinks it's horizontally ambiguous. And I think it's not picking to place the pink bar exactly 20 pts below either the purple or red views, which is why it thinks it's vertically ambiguous. Can anyone confirm or deny any of these suspicions? Or suggest a way around it? When I run it in the end, I just get this (I made the background of the scroll view yellow, which you can't tell in the storyboard screenshot):
Vertically Ambiguous
Okay, I think I've solved the vertical ambiguous part. I added two vertical constraints between the pink and purple views and two vertical constraints between the pink and red views. For each pair, the first constraint is that the spacing between them must be > 20 pts, and it has 1000 priority. The second constraint is that the spacing is = 20 pts, but it only has an 800 priority.
For example, if the bottom of the purple view ends up being lower than the bottom of the red view (as it is in my first screenshot), Xcode should try to set the vertical distance between the pink and red views = 20, but it will realize that that conflicts with condition that the space between the purple and pink being >= 20. Since the >= constraint has higher priority, the = constraint will be ignored. Now, when Xcode looks at the constraint that the spacing between the purple and pink views being = 20, it checks that against the constraint that the pink and red must be separated by at least 20. Since the bottom of the red view is higher than the bottom of the purple view, the >= 20 constraint between the red and the pink still passes.
So TL;DR, you can set up a view to have a spacing at a given value (x) from the most extreme of multiple views by giving it a >= x constraint with 1000 priority and giving it a = x constraint with <1000 priority for each view you are considering - and my vertical ambiguity problem has been solved. I do not yet have a solution for the horizontal ambiguity for all 4 of the views.
Horizontally Ambiguous
Okay, I got the horizontally ambiguous part fixed now as well. What it boils down to is that constraints in scroll views (and therefore table views) work differently than they do for any other kind of view. Here's what the step-by-step looks like.
Place the UIScrollView
Place a UIView into the UIScrollView to serve as a "contentView" for that scroll view
Add constraints to pin the contentView to all 4 corners of the scroll view AND pin it's width and height (so 6 constraints between the contentView and it's superview - 2 more than usual). Note that the width and the height can be pinned to something much larger than the normal screen size, which is probably why you are using a scroll view to begin with.
Add all of your other views you want in the UIScrollView (UIButtons, UILabels, etc. - I'm just going to assume UILabel from here on so I don't have to type as much, but any kind of UIView subclass will work) as subviews of the contentView, NOT directly as subviews of the UIScrollView
With this setup, the UILabels that are given constraints to their superview will constrain to the contentView, which has a defined size, so nothing is ambiguous.
Alternatively, if you want to fix the sizes of your UILabels (or dynamically calculate them, depending on the functionality of your app) and let the contentView expand to hold them:
Place the UIScrollView
Place a UIView into the UIScrollView to serve as a "contentView" for that scroll view
Add constraints to pin the contentView to all 4 corners of the scroll view AND pin it's width and height
create an outlet for the width constraints on the contentView (let's say we name it contentViewWidthConstraint)
place the UILabels
fix the sizes of the UILabels
create an outlet for the width constraints on the UILabels
Then in the code for viewWillLayoutSubviews
add up the widths of all of the UILabels and any gaps you want between them (as a CGFloat, which I'll call totalWidth)
set contentViewWidthConstraint.constant = totalWidth
And you're good to go! Note that I assumed you were setting the width in most of this example, but it should be just as applicable to height.
The problem is that many different widths of the two views will satisfy the constraints that you've set up. Here are two examples (I drew the shapes stacked vertically to make it easier to see the overlap example):
You can add a horizontal space constraint with a value of 0.

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