Why would all views in a view have userInteractionEnabled set to NO - ios

I have a view and for some unknown reason, it's not receiving any touches. When I debugged the view, I've found out that its views' userInteractionEnabled is set to NO. The problem is that, I haven't set it anywhere; neither in Interface Builder (triple checked) and code. The problem started when I first created the regular UIViewController in Interface Builder, without a subclass or any custom code. I know it's near impossible to tell something without code samples, but my project is heavily complicated, and as I've said, the problem is appearing in a regular UIViewController (no subclass) that I've set in interface builder, so there is no relevant code that would mean anything. The rest of the app just works fine, though.
What can possibly cause all views in a regular, default view controller to become userInteractionEnabled = NO?

Found the answer myself after traversing window's recursive description more carefully. I had a scroll view, and inside that, a content view, and other views inside. I'm on pure auto layout, so my scroll view's content view needs to calculate it's own intrinsic size. I was using a placeholder height for the content view in Interface Builder, to make editing interface visually easier. Apparently, I forgot to connect the last view inside my content view to bottom of my content view with a constraint, resulting in my content view having a height of 0 (though still displaying perfectly as it doesn't have clipping enabled). When it's size was 0, it was calculating userInteractionEnabled as NO automatically without being explicitly set to NO. I've added the required bottom constraint and the problem went away.

Related

Is it possible to set constraints for root view in XIB?

Recently i was following a tutorial to create frameworks in Swift, Where they create reusable visual effect view just like we see in Xcode build success pop up. I was doing the UI step by step where they created a new xib file and dragged and dropped UIVisualEffectView into it.
In the above image we can see that the UIVisualEffectView doesn't contain any constraints. It only has auto resizing masks in size inspector(as expected).
But the following image from the tutorial suddenly contains all necessary constraints for it's root view.
I'm already aware that we CANNOT, by default set any constraints for the root view. But in the tutorial the author seems to have added constraints for the same. I'm just curious to know if it is possible to do that or am i missing any fundamental idea ?
EDIT:
Constraints for root view.
OK, found one way to do this...
Haven't done any testing, so I'm not sure if the constraints are really set correctly or will be used by auto-layout at run-time, but this will put them there.
Create a new "View" XIB - this is how it looks to start:
Add a Visual Effect view to this view, and give it width and height constraints of 230 / 230:
Now, drag that Visual Effects view *out of the plain view, onto an empty space:
You will see it maintains its constraints. Then delete the original view, and add the other elements:
As you can actually see on your screenshot the width/height constraints belong to the View (first subview of Visual Effect View).
Look at the green line:
I don't know what's going on your tutorial (and I have no intention of watching it), and I have no idea under what circumstances the screen shot was achieved. But I do know the rules for how a view controller's main view gets sized.
Any view controller's main view must expect to be resized as it is placed into the interface. The size in the storyboard is therefore meaningless. That is why you cannot give it a size with auto layout.
If a view in a xib or storyboard is to be used as the main view of a view controller, it is meaningless (and would be wrong) to set constraints on it, because it will be the task of the view controller's parent (or, in the case of the window's rootViewController, of the window) to set the size of the view when it places it into the hierarchy.
If a view controller wants to vote on the size of its view when it is placed into the view hierarchy (for example, as a popover), that is what the content size (preferred explicit size) is for. But even then, the parent is the one who controls what actually happens.

UIScrollView and two-way scrolling

I'm having some trouble working with UIScrollView in my current project. My intention is to have a variable-size drawable canvas which can extend beyond both sides of the screen, and whose size is determined by the user at runtime. For this purpose, I put in a UIScrollView with a Content View inside of it in my View Controller. Unfortunately, Interface Builder keeps pestering me to define the X and Y axes of my Content View as a constant sizes which isn't possible given my specifications. I've even set the ScrollView.contentSize programmatically in my viewDidLoad method and Interface builder is still giving me errors. All other tutorials I've seen have only talked about one-way scrolling with UIScrollView, so here I am. Here's some screenshots of my storyboard hierarchy as well to make things more clear:
Hierarchy
Errors
Does anyone have any experience/workarounds for this kind of problem?
Interface builder is TRYING to be helpful and make sure that you don't have arbitrary constraints on your content view.
Remember that Interface Builder just cares about the initial state of the views it loads. It does not care what you do with them after they have been loaded.
Make IB happy by giving it some rational initial size for your content view. Then programatically after your scroll view loads you can resize the content view and set the scroll view's content size programmatically.

Xcode Interface Builder Height/Width Settings vs. View Controller

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how frame properties (height, width, posX, posY) work in terms of setting them in a View Controller vs on the Storyboard (Interface Builder).
For instance, let's say I have a UICollectionView object that I set to have a width of 400 and a height of 800. Then, in my code, I set the frame of that same object to 600 x 400. I haven't really found a consistent behavior. I tried setting the frame in viewDidLayoutSubviews and it sort of worked - but it seem to 'jump' back and forth between that and what was set on the storyboard.
Basically my question is, when do the properties on the storyboard change the UI object? I assume that I just need to know that, and then reset them in the View Controller after the fact. Or, is there a way to set the height and width empty so that I can do it all in the code?
Any insight into this would be very helpful!
If you use AutoLayout in your project then setting frames of the view objects you configured in storyboard won't work. Because after you set the frames, AutoLayout will update frames again which makes the frames set by you not working. If you want detail, you can check this article:Advanced Auto Layout Tools But you can set frames of view objects created programmatically to position them.
You can check if you have turned on AutoLayout in you storyboard file's file inspector. There is one thing though, if you do want to use AutoLayout, be sure to not set view's translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints to NO. The default value of this property is YES. If you use AutoLayout, this property is set by storyboard for you, because constraints created in storyboard are enough to layout the views.
EDIT:
1) if you are not using AutoLayout then setting frames in code should work as expected.
2) yes you can, a little tricky though. you must create UICollectionView yourself using [[UICollectionView alloc] init] or load it from nib. and then configure cell in IB with a xib file. you can use AutoLayout to layout subviews of cell in xib file. and register the class of cell to UICollectionView or load cell object from nib yourself. then you should calculate the size of every cell and let AutoLayout layout subviews of cells.
although this is easier than layout interface entirely in code, it's still a little complicated. the better way is using AutoLayout. Since not all the layout detail can be done in the design time since some views' frame may be different depending on data. you can make a basic layout with AutoLayout first, then IBOutlet the constraints you want to configure on the fly. and change the constant property of constraint objects later. this way, you can 100% control the layout process and also let AutoLayout do the dirty jobs you don't want to do yourself. I suggest you read official docs of AutoLayout and other good resources about it. The learning curve is steep at first, it may make you want to kill yourself too. But it's really powerful and easy to use. once you figured out how AutoLayout works, it will make your iOS development life much easier.
If you want to set the size of things through code, you could try creating outlets from the storyboard to the View Controller. Then in the View Controller, you can use viewDidLoad or viewDidAppear to set the size properties of your object(s).
viewDidLoad will get called when that view is first created. viewDidAppear will get called each time that view comes back onto the screen (like if you are going back with a navigation controller).

ios Autolayout sizeThatFits Issue With View Load Order... or Something

Intro:
The whole metrics table you see here is a view within a metrics viewcontroller.
There is a nearly identical table below in green (doesn't get displayed properly as you can see).
The red area and green area are actually just container UIViews for the viewcontroller's views.
The problem: I must use autolayout for my project. The size of these tables is dynamic (vertically).
It is my understanding that autolayout should be able to determine height automatically for UIViews (using intrinsicContentSize) as opposed to me manually constraining heights. The actual best height of the table in this example is 192. However, when calling sizeThatFits, it returns 405 on the viewcontroller's view. After hooking up the more button to a test method, I found that by calling sizeThatFits on the subviews of the viewcontroller's view, it properly returns a sum of 192. So, I can at least manually constrain the height by using a method to determine the sizeThatFits on the subviews, right..?
Unfortunately, this sizeThatFits method only seems to be able to work once the view has totally loaded on the screen (which explains why it works when using the "more" button test method).
If I attempt to manually determine the sizeThatFits automatically when the view loads, it returns 0 for all views. There seems to be an issue I'm not familiar with when it comes to the order of views loading or something. At what point does this method actually work?

Designing inside a scrollview in xcode 4.2 with storyboards

I have a vertically scrolling uiscrollview - imagine an 'about this app' page of a tab bar app which goes on a bit and requires a scrollview. It only contains a few images, a video and some text (only the video has been coded in - the rest have been placed in the GUI). In storyboard (Interface Builder?) Xcode 4.2, everything is set up as it should be and works fine, but the view is only as large as what you see on the screen, is it not possible to manually arrange in storyboard the items that are initially offscreen - that you need to scroll up to? The only way I've found so far is to design them on the visible view then navigate them down with the arrow keys..
In the storyboard select the viewController, then in Attributes inspector change 'size' to 'freeform'. Then change the 'height' of the view/scroll view to as big as you need. The default settings of struts and springs should take care of resizing the view back correctly when the app is run, but you should double check.
I feel your pain. The only way I found is to manually pan the scroll view in the size inspector to reveal the portion of the view that you wish to visually edit.
Use a UIView to contain elements so they are positioned relatively to this view. Add the view as a subview to the scrollview at 0,0.
pan: use the Y coordinate say to -200, then edit the contents.
to place more contents in the hidden part, pan again to reveal new real-estate
when finished, restore the values of the ScrollView's height and X,Y position.
Make sure the scroll view frame rectangle is smaller than the contained view.
New: 3/26/2013
I stumbled upon what I think is even simpler way of dealing with UIScrollView directly in storyboard.
No code needed, just storyboard settings. This maybe new in iOS6.1 / Xcode 4.6
No need to disable constraints (i.e. uncheck "Use autolayout" in File Inspector for storyboard file)
No need to add UIScrollView* scrollView; in .h
No need to add self.scrollView.contentSize = ... in overrides of viewWillAppear or viewDidLoad
Here is what I did (important parts highlighted with **): (see code)
Create a new project with storyboard enabled
Drop in a UIScrollView, set class in identity inspector for view controller
In attributes Inspector, change Size under simulated metrics to Freeform**
Select scroll View; In attributes inspector, turn on "scroll enabled" and "background" to "White" (you'll figure out why - if you don't)
Under Size Inspector (with scroll view selected) change the height to 900 for example**
Add buttons, one on top and one at the bottom
Add a default handler for buttonTouchUpInside for both buttons and simply Log sender.
See Code Select the View Controller and scroll view and check inspectors.
Just change the 'Simulated Size' of the view controller to freeform and set a height that is larger than the usual size, you will be able to see all the outlets you need to edit.
On iOS 6.0 you can drag a Container View inside your Scroll View. This will automatically create a new View for your content, outside of the current scene. You can then resize this view as big as needed to fit your content.
I believe you would still have to set the ScrollView content height at runtime, but at least you can design you content view at once without having to scroll up and down on IB.
Just uncheck the "Autoresize subviews" from any view that you're trying to resize and it should keep all your objects from resizing with it.
I've been struggling with this for a while now, and every single thing I've tried has failed.
Specifically, What I am trying to achieve is a freeform sized modal dialog with a scrollable view containing a container for another view. I have had a lot of varied results, including occasionally having it working correctly. Most often I get it looking exactly correct, but with no scrolling.
In finally downloaded Dickey Singh's code, which worked perfectly but had nothing special. (Excellent clean solution BTW). So, I added a container view to it, exactly as I had in my code, and it broke!
After some experimenting, I worked out what is going on. Just bear with me.
1) Using Auto Layout, the size of the scroll view seems to dictate what the scrolling bounds will be. Setting "contentSize" in "USer Defined Runtime Attributes" seems to have no effect on this, and neither does setting "contentSize" or "bounds" in "viewWillDisplay" or "viewDidLoad". Thus if the initial size of the scroll view is 800x800, that will be all the space that can be displayed. For this reason, when I want a scrollable region, I create a container view and then put the scrolling view inside the content.
2) Without Auto Layout, setting "contentSize" in "User Defined Runtime Attributes" works, as does by setting it programmatically in "viewDidLoad". I prefer to use "User Defined Runtime Attributes" because it keeps the size with the layout. This solution allows you to use scrolling view with more flexibility, since it can be any size at design time.
3) Regardless of Auto Layout, if any view within the scrolling region exactly matches EITHER the horizontal or vertical frame bounds, then the scroll view ceases to function as a scroll view. This applies to my own code and to Dickey Singh's code in every possible configuration that I have tried.
I have no idea what is causing (3), but it is clearly a bug.
I hope this helps everybody out there who is struggling to use scroll view. I imagine that some people are using them without any problem, and some (like me) have had noting but problems with them.
Here's my solution to design a ScrollView with a content larger than the screen entirely in Storyboard (well, except for 1 single line of code :-) :
https://stackoverflow.com/a/19476991/1869369
I'm currently developing an app for iOS 7, and I did exactly as #Dickey Singh's answer, but it doesn't work in the beginning.
After checking the storyboard, I found that we also need to add Auto Layout Constraints for the view controller who holds the scrollView.
It seems that such auto layout constraints would be added automatically before Xcode 5, but now we need to do it ourselves.
The way to add constraints: First select the view controller in the storyboard; Enter 'Editor' in the top menu; Select the 'Resolve Auto Layout Issues'; Select the 'Add Missing Constraints In Container'. Done :-)

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