Remove line break in UIActivityViewController - ios

My UIActivityViewController presents an image with some text underneath it:
let objectsToShare: [AnyObject] = [anImage, someText]
let activityVC = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: objectsToShare, applicationActivities: nil)
It's adding an undesired line break in between the image and the text when shared (red highlight):
Is there a way to remove it? FYI someText does not have any hard-coded line breaks in it. I'm impartial to an Objective-C or Swift answer to this.

Since you are not really in control of rendering the activities, only supplying them, you don't have control over the padding that is placed between the content and the activities.
I would explain to my designer/client/boss that it's out of your control, unfortunately, and file a rdar if you really think this is something you should have control of (I don't think it is, personally).
Hacky and not at all recommended...
Since UIActivityViewController is a UIViewController, you could, I guess, subclass it and iterate through the subviews in the .view of that object to find the right view/constraint and adjust it yourself but this is truly not something I would go near even if my job depended on it. It assumes so much about how Apple implemented that views hierarchy that you are a hostage to fortune that it will fail in any future iOS update where Apple may decided to rework that class.

Related

Why is my custom UIActivity no longer visible in a UIActivityViewController?

I have created a custom UIActivity and it was working, and I presented that UIActivityController as per typical tutorials (e.g. here). When configuring that controller I disabled basically all the services:
let items = [location]
let googlemaps = GoogleMapsActivity()
let applemaps = AppleMapsActivity()
let ac = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: items, applicationActivities: [googlemaps, applemaps])
ac.excludedActivityTypes = [.addToReadingList, .assignToContact, .markupAsPDF, .openInIBooks, .postToFacebook, .postToFlickr, .postToVimeo, .postToWeibo, .postToTwitter, .postToTencentWeibo, .print, .saveToCameraRoll]
present(ac, animated: true)
Then I might have stumbled onto an iOS Bug?
When that activity view controller was visible I tapped on "More", which gave me a list of my 2 custom activities. There was no UISwitch to turn them on an off, but there was a typical "row handle" as in a UITableView. I was testing, and tried re-arranging rows. This made one of the activities disappear from that list and now that activity is gone forever.
It won't appear in a list again, even if I delete and re-install the app. It seems I permanently removed the ability for this iOS device to make use of that UIActivity.
What have I done wrong or how can I fix it?
It might have had something to do with these 2 custom activities ultimately sharing the same UIActivity.ActivityType rawValue. I refactored that so they have different values and the issue doesn't seem to occur anymore, or I haven't been able to reproduce it.

UIActivityViewController showing blank options and can't be interacted

I was implementing new feature with share button on my app. Notice the activityViewController appeared blank. at first i thought the item i gave to share might be null, but when i tried to share a simple string, it still shows up like this, i revisited my old working code, and they are all acting like this. Even something as simple as this:
let activityViewController = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: ["test"], applicationActivities: nil)
activityViewController.popoverPresentationController?.sourceView = self.view
DispatchQueue.main.async {
self.present(activityViewController, animated: true, completion: nil)
}
this is what i got:
Anybody have any idea what is causing this and how to fix this?
EDIT: Tested Using Actual Device, Causing problems, in my released APP, the feedback is that its not showing blank, it is showing with options, just not inter-actable, can't be clicked and can't dismiss it, the app will just "hang" and then the user will have to kill the app to reuse it. After testing, i'm still not sure what is causing the blank, i've disabled all my UIViewController extension,(many of them is not automated and need functions to call anyway so i don't think they are the problem), and when i put a debugPrint in the completion block of the present function, it doesn't even get called so the activity view controller is not finished initializing?
Okay, finally found the culprit, somebody tipped me of that i should look into extension of UIViewController to check if i'm overriding something, well i didn't but i did override UILabel and UIButton's awakeFromNib and setNeedsDisplay because my app have multiple language support and In-App change language support and i wanted to "automate" UILabel and UIButton to change language font(because some font is better looking) so that i can avoid attaching listener to viewcontrollers to change language font when they do in-app language changes.
override open func awakeFromNib() {
super.awakeFromNib()
if let prefLang = UserDefaults.languageCode{
self.font = switchFontForLang(lang: prefLang)
}
}
override open func setNeedsDisplay() {
super.setNeedsDisplay()
if let prefLang = UserDefaults.languageCode{
self.font = switchFontForLang(lang: prefLang)
}
}
Particularly the setNeedsDisplay() is causing problem, i've put a debugmessage in them both and i found out its being called endlessly, my guess is because the "in-app" language font changing is trying to change language to the setting but the UIActivityViewController is somehow trying to change the font back or at the very least calling setNeedsDisplay() when it detects something is not right, which it will call into the overrided method and then it will detect it back again thus creating a loop of endlessly calling setNeedsDisplay().

iOS UITest - Navigate to all available screens

I am using iOS UITest for a Swift application. I use something like,
func testAllScreenNavigation() {
let app = XCUIApplication()
app.tabBars.buttons["Home"].tap()
app.navigationBars["Home"].buttons["More"].tap()
app.sheets.buttons["Cancel"].tap()
}
etc. to navigate some of the specific, tabs, buttons, etc. and switch to respective screens. But i want to navigate each and every screens of my Application (It can be BFS style navigation or DFS style navigation, no matter). Is there any way iOS provides so i can get all navigable elements and then explore deeper and deeper automatically for my App?
I also need to keep trace of which xcuoelement in a screen is already processed and which are not yet processed.
The only way I can think of is using Xcode UI test recorder feature.
While you are recording, navigate through all of your screens via the device/simulator and then the XCUIApplication() variable would be recorded with the appropriate references.
If the button/nav bar/any element has text on it, it will show up in the recorded code or else it will be referenced numerically.
Hope that helps.
Kind regards,
Mukund
I like your idea for getting all views and check whether the layouting and localization for example is fine.
I think you need to specify your criteria for "screens" and how they are accessed.
Basically, one could thing of the following structure
- UITabBarController
-- UISplitViewController
--- UINavigationController
---- UIViewController
----- UIBarButtonItems
----- UIView
----- UIButton
----- UISwitch
----- UITableViewCell
You could now go top down from the UITabBarController to the next controlling instance (might also skip one, e.g. SplitViewControllers on iPhones).
You can use the general property:
XCUIApplication().tabBars
Nevertheless that transition is the problem: How would you get from one ViewController to another and are they all position in the ViewController's View or do you have to loop the subviews of a view.
UIButton -> Touch Up Inside
UISwitch -> Value Changed
UITableViewCell -> DidSelectRowAtIndexPath
UIView -> UILongPressGestureRecognizer
This is how I would basically set it up:
For each UIViewController instance, get the related View (and perform the following call recursively).
Check all the subviews of a view.
For UIViews, go even further and check their subviews
For UIButtons, perform TouchUpInside
and so on.
Make sure to have a condition to stop going deeper, as UITableViews got a lot of subviews or your UIWebViews would of course be set up in a different way.
This way you should be able to navigate through a lot Views in your app hierarchy, but you will need some extensions for UIBarButtonItems, custom Gesture Recognizers and of course also for your "special" controls that might listen to value changes and perform a layout-change.
Accessing specific elements
In addition to the above approach where you simply get an array of elements of a specific type, you can access specific elements (e.g. those where you know they are of a very specific type with certain ValueChangeListeners or something)
To access a specific object in particular, like the TabBar example from above, you can use the accessibilityLabel like so. At first you need to declare the accessibilityLabel in your code or in the .xib-file/.storyboard:
// just to illustrate, so you get an idea:
self.tabBarController.isAccessibilityElement = true
self.tabBarController.accessibilityLabel = "tabBar"
And then do:
let tabBar = XCUIApplication().tabBars["tabBar"]
Here is Apple's documentation for setting these accessibilityLabels:
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/iPhoneAccessibility/Making_Application_Accessible/Making_Application_Accessible.html
A great way to get the related identifier of an element would be to use the Accessibility Inspector from Apple:
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/technotes/TestingAccessibilityOfiOSApps/TestAccessibilityiniOSSimulatorwithAccessibilityInspector/TestAccessibilityiniOSSimulatorwithAccessibilityInspector.html
Accessing elements in general
To access elements in general, you need to make use of the XCUIElementType of these objects, here you will access the objects based on their classes.
E.g. you could call:
"tabBars", "navBars", "tables", "buttons", and so on from the elements in general.
Still you would be facing the issue with "special controls". As the Apple documentation lacks (imho) some detail about properties and attributes, I do recommend the docs here: https://blog.metova.com/guide-xcode-ui-test/ It provides a great overview of what is accessible and may help you getting some better understanding.
An overview of the available XCUIElementTypes can be found here. Basically, the elementType property is an enumerated value that represents the type of an element. XCUIElementType is a very large enumeration and some of its members do not apply to iOS applications (they apply to MacOS X apps). Some of the more commonly used values are:
Alert
Button
NavigationBar
TabBar
ToolBar
ActivityIndicator
SegmentedControl
Picker
Image
StaticText
TextField
DatePicker
TextView
WebView
https://developer.apple.com/reference/xctest/xcuielementtype?language=objc

Using custom NSView/UIView subclass from XIB?

OK, this may sound very basic (especially for someone who has written tens of thousands of Objective-C code), but I've always tried to avoid all this... or just tweak existing solutions. The result? I've never learnt how to do something simple like that.
So, here's my ultra-simple scenario:
I want to create a custom NSView (let's say a simple view with an image and a text in it), which I'll be able to assign in the Interface Builder (take an NSView element and set its class to MYCustomView - that's all - nothing more complicated)
I know I can write an NSView subclass and have it draw all my elements programmatically in drawRect: and all this - but I most definitely don't find any point in that.
What I do want is to simply draw the view in the Interface Builder (in our example, with a "placeholder" image and textfield), be able to use it as the "basis" of our NSView subclass, and also maintain pointers to the two elements in the view so that I can programmatically access them.
I know it's doable - I'm not asking about that. What I need is an ultra-simple walkthrough. Is there anything you can point me to?
Rephrasing the question in a... one-liner:
How can I replace the programmatic approach (seen in like 99.9% of NSView subclasses) in drawRect:, with a layout taken from a XIB?
P.S.
(A) Trust me, it must have been the 100th time I've been reading about NSViewControllers and all these, but not having used them, probably means that I still haven't found the point in using them...
(B) Please, don't shoot me with "what have you tried" questions. In the course of time, I've tried loads of things and at times I've somehow made it. However, it always feels like a crappy, messed up thing I just managed to get working. Nothing more, nothing less. All I want is to know if there is a simple tutorial on the above simple scenario.
(C) If I get an actual explanatory answer to this one, I guarantee I'll re-post it myself. You simply can't believe how many seasoned Cocoa developers have serious trouble dealing with this...
I've always wanted "custom" Storyboard classes as well!
This may not totally answer your question but this is just how we do it now, in iOS: just use container views.
Full extremely long tutorial: https://stackoverflow.com/a/23403979/294884
Everything's a container view in iOS now.
What we do is just have a scene, and then duplicate it: then change the colors or whatever as you describe.
Here's a literal example from the storyboard that was open behind this browser window!
Notice the small class/scene thing, we just copy it. Notice in the example it is slightly customised, just as you say. They are all the same class (it happens to be caled "BookBist") {"bist" == "bouncy list" btw}
Then as I say container views are the secret because, well, it's for exactly this purpose, it's why apple finally introduced "container views".
(BTW on that long container view tutorial. Search down to What if you want (say) a table controller or a page view controller instead of a UIViewController? it's a critical trick when making container views! Ridiculously Apple gives you a "default" VC when you drag in a container view; of course you never want that; in the example at hand I put the small BookBist scenes connected to the container views wherever they are needed.) Example...
Now, I 10000% understand what you are asking and have always wanted to know the answer myself!
For use HALF the answer, is, as I say, "copy the scene" so that works perfectly in modern storyboard. I appreciate that sucks, because what you want is a prefab, like in any game engine such as Unity3D, right? Me too!
But do note that THE OTHER HALF of your answer is certainly "container view magic" - "everything's" a container view now in iOS, indeed Apple finally put them in to make a rational way to do exactly the sort of thing you describe.

Should UIAlertView be subclassed?

I am sure the answer to this is "no" as the documentation is very clear. But I am a little confused. A standard UIAlertView is pretty dull and I want to improve the look and it seems that other apps do it (see the example below).
Another possibility is that they are not subclassed UIAlertViews. In which case, how is this achieved?
The page UIAlertViews states
Appearance of Alert Views
You cannot customize the appearance of alert views.
So how do we get the something like the example shown here?
No, do not subclass it. From the docs:
Subclassing Notes
The UIAlertView class is intended to be used as-is
and does not support subclassing. The view hierarchy for this class is
private and must not be modified.
What you can do though is create a UIView and have it act similar to a UIAlertView. It's isn't very difficult and seems to be what they are doing in your op.
Apple's docs say that you should not subclass it. That means that there are probably internal reasons that would make it difficult to make it work right.
You might or might not be able to make a subclass of UIAlertView work, but you do so at your own risk, and future iOS releases might break you without warning. If you tried to complain Apple would laugh and tell you "I told you so".
Better to create a view that looks and acts like an alert but is your own custom view/view controller. Beware that even this is dangerous, because Apple has been making sweeping changes to the look and feel of it's UI elements recently. If you implement a view controller that looks and acts like a variant of the current alert view, Apple could change that look and/or behavior in the future and your UI app would end up looking odd and outdated. We've been bitten by this sort of thing before.
Rethink your strategy. Why do you need to use an Alert View? Besides having a modal view displayed top-most on your view stack, there's not much else that it does. Instead, subclass UIView or UIViewController to define your own interface, using images and ui elements to give it the style and input functionality as needed.
I usually subclass UIView, and attach it to the app's window's view so that I'm certain that it will be displayed on top of anything else. And you can use blocks to provide hooks into the various input elements of your new view (did user press OK, or did user enter text?)
For example:
// Instantiate your custom alert
UIView *myCustomAlert = [[UIMyCustomUIViewAlert alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(...)];
// Suppose the new custom alert has a completion block for when user clicks on some button
// Or performs some action...
myCustomAlert.someEventHandler = ^{
// This block should be invoked internally by the custom alert view
// in response to some given user action.
};
// Display your custom alert view
UIWindow *window = [[UIApplication sharedApplication] keyWindow];
[window addSubview: myCustomAlert];
// Make sure that your custom alert view is top-most
[window bringSubviewToFront: myCustomAlert];
Using this method, however, will not pause the thread's execution like UIAlertView does. Using this method, everything will continue running as usual. So if you need to pause execution while your custom alert is showing, then it gets much trickier.
But otherwise, creating your own custom alerts is quite straightforward, just as you would customize any other view. You could even use Interface Builder.
Hope this helps.
No. You absolutely should not subclass a UIAlertView for any reason. Apple explicitly states this in their documentation (see "Subclassing Notes"). They even tell you that it relies on private methods - and we all know that meddling in private methods in an AppStore app is immediate grounds for rejection.
HOWEVER, there isn't a need to subclass UIAlertView on iOS 7. Apple introduced a new Custom ViewController Transitions feature in iOS 7.0 that lets you present completely custom ViewControllers with completely custom transitions. In other words, you could very easily make your own UIAlertView or even something better. There's a nice tutorial on the new feature here:
In fact, there are lots of good tutorials on this - a quick Google search on the topic turns up a huge wealth of information.

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