iOS - viewDidLayoutSubviews called before auto-layout completed on iOS7 - ios

We're currently having a problem that only seems to affect iOS7 devices.
Within our .xib file we have two views within a container view (i.e.: not at the top level of the view hierarchy) that need to be circular on display. The views have constraints applied to their position and horizontal spacing within the container, and an aspect ratio condition requiring they are square. The views should expand in width/height on larger screen sizes, respecting the constraints described.
In our VC, we have the following in viewDidLayoutSubviews to force these views to appear circular:
- (void)viewDidLayoutSubviews {
self.progressContentContainerView.layer.cornerRadius = self.progressContentContainerView.frame.size.width/2;
}
This seems to work fine on iOS8, however on iOS7 there is a period after the view has been displayed where the constraints have not yet been applied and the size of the view/views is incorrect (see attached screenshots). This resolves itself and correctly renders a circle after half a second. This only appears to happen when the views that we intend to be circular are NOT at the top level of the VC's view hierarchy which seems to imply that viewDidLayoutSubviews is called before the subviews of subviews have also been laid out.
My guess is that we could potentially fix this issue by subclassing UIView for the nested container, adding references to the circular view within this subclass and overriding viewDidLayoutSubviews here to make the cornerRadius adjustment. This seems like a bit of a workaround though and I'm interested to see if there are other options.
Is there a cleaner/more idiomatic solution to this problem?

I know this is an old question but have you tried calling either:
[self.progressContentContainerView setNeedsUpdateConstraints];
or:
[self.progressContentContainerView layoutIfNeeded];

Related

iOS Auto Layout UIView Drawing cycle

In one of the WWDC videos, Apple said that the layout is done from top down, ie from superview to subview (after constraints are calculated from bottom up). Display is also done from top down.
My questions are:
1. At what point in the viewcontroller is a view's frame (origin and size) determined? I tried to log the size of a view (defined using auto layout), but it was always 0 0 0 0, which is odd, because the view is already generated in the simulator;
For an autoresized view, when is view.frame available?
Same question, except this time it is UIImageView.frame. I tried to log to console, even though the size is fit into the constraints, the logged UIImageView frame is 0 0 width_of_original_image height_of_original_image. But for other views like labels, the frame is printed correctly on the console.
It seems like that there is a mysterious auto layout engine that performs transform, and nobody knows what is going on inside the engine, but to check what is thrown onto the simulator display to figure out how the view was rendered by this engine???
It's not mysterious. It's quite simple! Think of constraints as instructions written down on pieces of paper - the views. Every once in a while, it's layout time! The runtime collects the pieces of paper from the views in order and obeys them - and so you end up with laid out frames.
So if you check sizes of things before layout time, you get the wrong answer because it hasn't happened yet.
And when is layout time? It's whenever the runtime sends views layoutSubviews - in fact, the runtime obeys constraints and performs layout during layoutSubviews. And your view controller can hear about this before or after, with viewWillLayoutSubviews and viewDidLayoutSubviews.
I think the part that confuses beginners the most is what happens when a view controller comes into existence. viewDidLoad means it has a view, but that is all; neither the view nor its subviews are in the interface yet, so obviously there can be no layout. Considerably later, we get viewWillAppear:, the view goes into the interface, and now we get layout. So if you check sizes in, say, viewDidAppear:, they will be right.

Autolayout causing UI Elements to "snap" into place at runtime?

I have a UIView with a UIImageView at the very top, a UILabel below it, a UIButton below that, and a UISegmentedControl that determines what determines what embedded UIview to display at the bottom (which also a choice to not show any at all).
I've run into the problem where I've set up all of my constraints in the interface builder, and everything seems to be fine when I switch between screen sizes in the storyboard. However when I actually run the project on a device or emulated, the UIimage at the top is briefly stretched before "snapping" into a size the fits the constraints. Also, it seems as if the label disappears for a brief second and reappears after the image has snapped into a size. After the "snap" has occurred, everything is in place and there are no problems.
This snapping occurs both when testing on a 4 and 3.5 inch display. I find this odd because I've designed the UI for the 4inch screen perfectly.
Does anyone know why this is happening?
Edit
Here's whats the constraints look like in IB.
This is potentially due to adjustments that you might be making to your UI elements (or constraints) from the view controller in code. For example, if you are programmatically setting a different UIImage into your UIImageView, and this code is happening too late in the view lifecycle (for example, in viewDidAppear) after a layout pass has already calculated view positions and sizes, then you will see a visible snap as views take on new positions based on the new intrinsic content size of the image view.
This could be caused by other adjustments such as injecting a localized string into a UILabel in code, which causes the label to have a smaller or larger intrinsic content size, which in turn affects the layout based on your constraints.
If you are making adjustments to your UI in code, make sure they are happening in viewDidLoad or viewWillAppear: so that they occur before the view's initial layout pass (and the view's animation onscreen).
If you're still seeing issues, you can try explicitly forcing an immediate layout pass to occur on the view controller's view at the end of viewWillAppear: by doing the following:
- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
[self.view setNeedsLayout];
[self.view layoutIfNeeded]; // forces an immediate layout pass
}
Spacing between the UIElements might be the problem . Specially when using Pickers
Got it, You have applied constraint for Picker to adjust along with segmented control. So when app runs on 4 inch screen , picker automatically fits properly, but for 3.5 Inch picker always starts from bottom of the screen and picker will push segmented control upwards and hence segmented control will push rest control automatically.
Remove picker and segmented control constraint.

UITableView in storyboard not updating content size on rotation

I'm working on project targeted for iOS 6 that leverages storyboards and auto layout. In the storyboard there are many places where a UITableView is added as a subview to a view controllers view. This table view uses prototype cells from the storyboard.
The issue we're running into is that if the view controller is initially loaded in landscape orientation and the device is then rotated to portrait, the table view begins to scroll both vertically and horizontally. The table views cells are drawn with the correct dimensions but there is additional white space to the right.
It appears that while the frame and bounds of the table view are being updated to the correct size on rotation, the table views content size is not. Regardless of any update rotation change the content size remains the same dimensions.
The issue doesn't present itself if programatic table view cells are used.
A few garish work arounds I've found, 1.) calling reloadData or reloadRowsAtIndexPaths:withRowAnimation: 2.) manually setting the property contentSize.
Both of these seem less than ideal.
I've added this
link to a dead simple sample project which demonstrates this issue. The only changes made are to the storyboard and the main view controllers implementation.
Before rotation
After rotation
I'm having the same issue - can't seems to find any documented answer related to this. I ended up manually modifying the UITableView contentSize like you mentioned in:
- (void) viewWillLayoutSubviews
{
self.tableView.contentSize = CGSizeMake(self.tableView.frame.size.height, self.tableView.contentSize.height);
}
I ran into this issue today and filed a bug report with Apple.
Appears that if you are using a custom cell with a UI element AND autoLayout, the UIScrollView content size is having problems.
If you remove all UI elements, OR turn off autoLayout, OR use a factory cell (basic, etc), all works fine.
Same issue I have rectified in my project.
I guess this is a bug in Storyboard.
Then I have solved it by manual coding in willAutorotate method by setting
tableview.contentsize = CGSizeMake(tableview.width, tableview.contentsize.height);
Hope this will work for you as well.
If you find any apple documentation regarding the same then please update me as well. Till then you can use the same solution.
Appears that if you are using a custom cell with a UI element AND autoLayout, the UIScrollView content size is having problems.
I had to turn off AutoLayout for my custom UITableViewCells to be able to scroll to the bottom on updating the data and then [self.tableView reloadData].
With AutoLayout turned on, the tableView.contentSize was being updated, but I still wasn't able to scroll to the bottom unless I rotated the device.
I found the following to work for me:
- (void)viewDidLayoutSubviews
{
[super viewDidLayoutSubviews];
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
self.tableView.contentSize = CGSizeMake(self.tableView.frame.size.width, self.tableView.contentSize.height);
});
}
Notice the async dispatch: if that line would be executed synchronously then the contentSize change would trigger another layout pass before the current one would have completed. This triggers an exception:
Auto Layout still required after sending -viewDidLayoutSubviews to the
view controller.
Usage of Constraints helped me. Since you are using Storyboards, it is really easy to set Constraint values for all edges, so UITableView will always fill the whole ViewController (of course if UITableView fills whole ViewController) regardless of device orientation.
I had the same problem.
I found this link. When I tried to implement this I did not find the Auto-sizing attributes for my view then I clicked on Master View Controller and then clicked on the File Inspector and uncheck Use Autolayout and then go to Attributes inspector auto-resizing should be there then you can change the attributes how you want it.
I am sure you must have managed to figure this out.

controlling orientation changes from within a subview

Have a very large program where there is always a superview that just encompasses a custom segment controller. This view sits at the top of screen and controls navigation in several ways.
So the problem arose in only a selected few view controllers where everything was 100% programmaticly created. Essentially CGRect are not being defined in the property dynamic coordinates. But are not being recalculated on orientation change. Does anyone have a simple way to control this in the subview? I'm about to code something in the superview to pass to orientation to other subviews.. but there has to be a better way. Ideas?
Couple of pointers:
You can use auto-resizing masks to determine what happens to your views when their bounds change (ie, when the orientation changes). So UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth means your view will 'stretch' proportionally with the superview when the bounds are changed. UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleLeftMargin means your view will effectively be right-aligned, as the left margin will adjust according to the width, etc etc.
Sometimes auto-resizing masks aren't enough - perhaps you have to change the view's content on an orientation, or do a complex animation. In this case, you use the willAnimateRotationToInterfaceOrientation method in your view controller. Your subviews might have a custom adjustForOrientation method that you've written that you can trigger when willAnimateRotation... is called.
Finally, on iOS 5 you can actually nest view controllers inside of view controllers, in which case orientation events get passed through automatically...but this is probably needlessly complex for what you're trying to do.

What is the purpose of UIView's autoresizingMask?

After reading about UIView's autoresizingMask on SO and developer.apple.com I'm still unclear what the purpose is. What's a situation where setting this property is necessary?
Yes, it is often necessary to set it if you don't want to resize the views manually. Note that it is mostly useful for subviews (i.e. those views that don't take the whole screen) rather then the main view of your app.
Views typically may need resizing if:
the device is rotated
an extra view (say, an ad) is added to the view, so the existing subviews have less available space.
For example, suppose if you have a view with two buttons on it, one in the top-left corner, another in the top-right corner. In order for the buttons to get wider when the view transitions from portrait to landscape, you need to set the FlexibleLeftMargin to the right button, FlexibleRightMargin to the left button.
Edit: autoresizingMask is also the first thing to look at if you see weird holes or overlaps when device is rotated or a new subview is added. Quite often the proper setting of these masks for subviews can get you a nice looking view in both orientations without having to lay out subviews manually - but usually it takes some experimenting.
Edit2: (since this is still gathering upvotes) Autoresizing masks are now mostly superseded with "Auto Layout", which allows for much more flexible constraints on views' sizes and positions. That being said, translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints is still occasionally useful for dynamically added views.
The purpose is that UIView properly shifts and resizes when its superview changes due to resizing, orientation change, showing editing controls in tableview cells etc.

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