UIKeyInput with All Caps Keyboard - ios

I have created a custom text input view and am trying to force the keyboard to show all caps on the keyboard; similar to a UITextField. Here is what I have tried, but it isn't working for me:
class CustomInput: UIView, UIKeyInput {
// UIKeyInput inherits this property
var autocapitalizationType: UITextAutocapitalizationType {
get { return .AllCharacters }
set { }
}
}
I hoped that overriding the variable and only allowing .AllCharacters would force the keyboard to all caps, but that isn't the case. Any ideas how I can get the keyboard to all caps?

I have this same problem in an app I'm currently working on. Have spent a fair amount of time trying to figure this out, especially since autocorrectionType and keyboardType both seem to work fine.
My current work-around is to make my custom view implement UITextInput instead of UIKeyInput, with dummy code for all unused properties and functions. Extremely ugly work-around but it's the only way I can get it to work, so I'm running with it.
Would be interested to see if anyone has insight into the underlying issue here.

Related

Can't set desired view to focus when multiple views in area of focus change

I'm having a hard time finding a solution to this so I thought I might as well ask to see if anyone has a better solution to this than I have. So to frame the question say I have a UI layout like so.
Where one focusable view is much larger than the other. And contains multiple valid focusable views underneath it when the user changes focus downward. Something like this.
My question is what is a good way to enforce that the button to the far left is focused as apposed to the other buttons.
So far the only solution I can think of is to override canBecomeFocused in a custom button subclass, and return the value of a settable variable.
class CustomButton: UIButton {
var isFocusable = true
canBecomeFocused: Bool {
return isFocusable
}
}
Then change the value of isFocusable based on where I want the focus to go next. It works but I'm not super happy with it. Just wondering if maybe someone else can think of a better solution.
You can check out UIKitCatalogtvOSCreatingandCustomizingUIKitControls example from Apple at https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/samplecode/UICatalogFortvOS/Introduction/Intro.html
Check out FocusGuide behaviour or shouldFocusAtItem and canFocusAtItem to get your preferredFocus behaviour.

[Objective-C]Edit UILabel without hiding keyboard

Im trying to copy the content in a UILabel but without hiding the keyboard, the problem is that when I show the menu of copy in the label the label becomes first responder and the keyboard resign, but I want to do that without hiding the keyboard, is there a way to do that?
It is not possible with UILabel.
You should use UITextField for that. Just disable editing.
AFAIK, you can't do that. But I think you can have a work around for that. Instead of not hiding the keyboard, why don't keep track the current active text field and then active it after user press copy. You can use UIPasteboardChangedNotification to know when user pressed copy. For example:
self.lastActiveTextField = aTextField
-(void)pasteBoardDidChange:(NSNotification*)notif
{
[self.lastActiveTextField becomeFirstResponder];
}
I think so u r looking something like this project.
UILabel with UIKeyInput protocol implementation
https://github.com/hackiftekhar/IQEditableLabel
I think, it is not possible, there can be only one first responder at any time. If the keyboard is shown because of another UI element, then when you try to copy the content from UILabel, the OS has to transfer first responder from other element to UILabel, as there is no need of keyboard for UILabel, the keyboard will hide automatically. So, you have to make changes to your elements to fix this problem or use third party UI elements who can fix your problem.
Every UIView component has a method called: canBecomeFirstResponder. He is read only, but you can subclass the UI object and override the getter:
- (BOOL)canBecomeFirstResponder {
return false;
}
I didn't do the test, but if the "become first responder" is the problem, that should solve it.

iOS Accessibility - is there a way to tell when VoiceOver has changed focus?

I'd like to call a method every time a different element is focused while VoiceOver is active. I was hoping there would be some UIAccessibilityNotification for this, but I can't seem to find any.
Ultimately, my goal is to add an additional condition prior to reading the accessibility label. For example, as opposed to saying (by default) "If UIButton becomes focused: read label", I'd like to be able to say "When UIButton becomes focused AND UIButton's background color is blue: read label".
So my question is: how do I either add an additional condition prior to reading the label, or receive a notification when a new element becomes focused?
You can't explicitly tell when the user moves the VoiceOver cursor (just like you can't tell where a sighted user is looking).
For the behavior you want, you have two options:
Set the button's accessibilityLabel to an appropriate value whenever the other conditions change.
Subclass UIButton and override its accessibilityLabel getter method:
- (NSString *) accessibilityLabel {
if (SOME_CONDITION) {
return #"Hooray!";
} else {
return #"Womp womp";
}
}
If you need to disable an item entirely, rather than returning nil or a blank string, you should set its accessibilityElementsHidden property to YES.
You can use the UIAccessibilityFocus protocol to detect changes in focus by accessibility clients (including VoiceOver). Note that UIAccessibilityFocus is an informal protocol that each accessibility element must implement independently.
That said, for your use case, Aaron is right to suggest returning a different accessibilityLabel under each condition.

iOS 8 Keyboard Extension Detecting first responder change

I'm writing a keyboard extension for iOS (hence overriding UIInputViewController) and I'm trying to figure out how to detect when the first responder changes. Is this even possible?
My motivation is that when the user selects a different text input field (while the keyboard is active) the style of the keyboard might need to change to suit the attributes of that input. This can happen when there are several text fields displayed on a UI and the user first selects one (causing the keyboard to be initialized) then the user selects another with different attributes (keyboard doesn't know it).
I've looked through the methods exposed by UIInputViewController and the delegates it implements but nothing I've seen really fits the bill. The closest thing I've found is selectionDidChange on UITextInputDelegate.
I found the best way to get this information is to override the UITextInputDelegate textDidChange method (UIInputViewController implements UITextInputDelegate). It turns out that textDidChange is called whenever the user switches the input text field (first responder), or when the text changes for some reason (luckily not when it is your keyboard that initiated the change).
-(BOOL)textFieldShouldBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField
That should tell you when it expects to become firstResponder. A couple things to keep in mind;
*This will only be called when a UITextFied is the thing becoming firstResponder. If some other object decides to, this won't be called. It'll probably call the method below.
-(BOOL)becomeFirstResponder
*Your class must conform to the UITextFieldDelegate and all of your UITextFields must set their delegates to self. Without that they won't call shouldBeginEditing on your class.

custom input view keyboard functionality

I wanted to ask a quick question just to make sure I am not missing anything simple before I implement a more difficult method. I need to create a custom keyboard for an iPhone application. This I have already done by creating a view with the buttons, using a custom input view and it displays exactly like it should. Now most of the buttons are standard numbers which need to update a UITextField in the screen that called the keyboard. Does anyone know a simple way to do this? I assume there has to be a built in function that the keyboard uses to send the information but I haven't been able to find any reference to it. Otherwise I will have to go the more difficult route. If anyone has a simple way to do this I would appreciate it. I haven't worked with custom keyboards before.
You won't be able to do it the same way that Apple does it, as their keyboard is basically an input device, globally.
I recommend you just append the data in your button press multiplex method. Here's an example:
NSString *appendThisText = #"subtitle";
self.myTextView.text=[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#%#", self.myTextView.text, appendThisText];
Custom keyboards are simpler than you realise.
UITextField conforms to the UITextInput protocol. That's a bit of a red-herring because this protocol provides all the really complex stuff like selecting text and so on. But UITextInput itself conforms to UIKeyInput. This is your friend.
The key UIKeyInput methods are:
- (void)insertText:(NSString *)text;
- (void)deleteBackward;
Your keyboard class should have a delegate (which points to the textfield that the keyboard is operating on) and you simply call these methods to insert and delete text.

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