Autolayout - Dynamic View height in different device and orientation - ios

Finally somehow i managed to create the login view using auto layout (Still not sure, if its correct or not). everything looks good in different devices as well as in both the orientations also.
What i want to achieve now is when user clicks on any textfield my gray view scrolls up and when tapping on the return key on the keyboard it should go down to its initial position.
After doing a lot of googling, I came to know is I have to give top spacing margin related to the parent view (self.view) and set change the constraints programmatically like below:
self.topSpaceConstraint.constant = 50 (Set Priority to 999 in my code)
self.view.setNeedsUpdateConstraints()
But when i am doing so, my container view (Gray view) squeezes. I am not able to figure it out why, I want a fixed height constraint (Set Priority to 1000 in my code) along with vertical and horizontal center. Please suggest how to scroll the container view with proper auto layout constraints.

Related

iOS UIScrollView, what am I misunderstanding? I cannot get a scrollview to scroll

I am a pretty new iOS developer and am coming across my first need for a scroll view. The page I need to design is a little complex. Since I was struggling to get that to layout correctly, I decided to create a super simple scene just so I could make sure I understood how to get UIScrollViews to work. Apparently it didn't help as things aren't working and I am stuck after following several tutorials.
I'm working in Xcode 8.1 and Swift 3.
Screenshots at the end of this post.
I have a scene that consists of a scrollview and a child view with two labels in it. I’ve set the labels to be ~700pt apart to try to make scrolling happen. Nothing scrolls and you can only see the first label. Additionally, the child view does not expand to be full height.
You can see in the screen shots that my scroll view has constraints to pin it to the sides of the superview.
The child view has the same.
The label constraints position them within the child view and 700pt from each other. I thought that this would give the views the height they need to make scrolling happen. There are no constraint errors.
I am hoping for the red childview to fill the vertical space and then scroll. At this point I’d take any layout as long as something was scrolling. Nothing is though, what do I not get?
Screenshots:
(removed due to link limit because I'm still a new SO user)
EDIT (6/12/16):
I've made some changes and gotten a little closer. Primarily, it was suggested to me elsewhere to set one of the labels to be equal height with the scroll view. This now gives me the "bounce" effect which means stuff is sort of scrolling; however, we're still only dealing with one screen of content as the second label which is hidden below is clipped off.
Here's where things stand:
edited hierarchy
edited screenshot
When you are using a UIScrollView in a storyboard, you need to ensure that the scroll view is able to compute the size of its content. If you don't have sufficient constraints then you will get an error in Interface Builder:
Scrollable Content Size Ambiguity
Clicking the Info icon on this error will advise you that there needs to be constraints touching all sides of the scroll view and to ensure that you can trace a continual line of constraints from left-to-right and top-to-bottom.
You can achieve this with or without the content view you have added. I will show you how to do it without the content view in scroll view, simply because there are fewer constraints that way and therefore less typing.
Add the scroll view to the root view
Constrain the top/left/top/bottom of the scroll view to its superview (the root view). Remember to turn off constrain to margins if you want the full width of the screen
Add label 1 and label 2 to the scroll view
Constrain top/leading/bottom of label 1 to the scroll view
Constrain top/trailing/bottom of label 2 to the scroll view
Constrain the trailing edge of label 1 to the leading edge of label 2 with 0 space
Constrain label 1 width to be equal to the width of the scroll view
Constrain label 1 height to be equal to the height of the scroll view
Constrain the width and height of label 2 to be equal to the width and height of label 1
There is no step 10 :)
ScrollViews are particular in that they like to know explicitly how much they are supposed to scroll. The best way I have found to handle this is to have the following hierarchy with some constraints:
-Scroll View
-Content View
-View (constrained to top, bottom, leading, trailing anchors)
-Your other views (e.g. Label)
By having one View living underneath the Content View and then containing all of your other Views within that View, the ScrollView then knows how much it's supposed to scroll (it just uses the size of the one child View) no matter how much stuff you have inside of the child View.
Let me see if I can snap a picture of an example from one of my projects. In the meantime, give this hierarchy a try and let me know if it works for you. You would probably constrain the Label to the top and leading anchors of the child View and then constrain the height to something taller than the screen (e.g. 1000 units).
Let me know if you have any questions.
Edit: Example hierarchy below

UISlider causing horizontal scrolling

I have a simple screen, with a slider and a label positioned next to each other horizontally. I have embedded these inside a UIScrollView (I set this to fill the screen and used 'Add missing constraints'), because I will need vertical scrolling later down the line. I don't however, want horizontal scrolling. I have seen numerous posts on here and other sources about people wanting to disable horizontal scrolling, however I'm not sure that's what I want to do, I think I need to restrict the UISlider from causing the horizontal scrolling; I think it is trying to take up more width than the screen. I have added what I think are the necessary horizontal constraints:
Leading space to container for the UISlider
Horizontal spacing to the UILabel, and
Trailing space to container for the UILabel
But this still causes horizontal scrolling, and the UISlider's are the cause, they are taking up more room than I want, as seen below:
I have tried disabling horizontal scrolling in the code using a few techniques, one being:
func scrollViewDidScroll(scrollView: UIScrollView) {
if scrollView.contentOffset.x>0 {
scrollView.contentOffset.x = 0
}
}
but this does not seem to stop the horizontal scrolling.
Can anyone offer any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
My suggestion is to never use Add missing constraints. It never does what you really want.
Here's the problem. You are laying out your UI on a ViewController in the Storyboard that is square. Apple did this to remind you that you need to be flexible in your design, but it doesn't match the size of any device. When you Add missing constraints, it uses the absolute dimensions of that square to create the constraints which are certainly wrong.
In your specific case, it is giving the slider a width that is too wide, which is why the slider goes off the right side of your screen.
Here's the trick about scroll views. If the contents inside of a scroll view are wider than the scroll view itself, then that content will scroll. The same applies vertically: if the contents inside of a scroll view are taller than the scroll view, then the contents will scroll.
In order to design this to work on all phones, you need to make sure that the contents of the scroll view are laid out correctly for each phone size. Which certainly means you don't want to use specific widths for both the label and the slider because you'll end up with the wrong width for some device, if not all of them.
The best way to do this is to:
Drag out the scroll view and add it to your ViewController. Add constraints to make sure it is properly sized on all phones, such as attaching it on all sides to its superview with a fixed distance.
Drag out a new UIView and drop it on the scroll view. Drag its edges until it exactly matches the size of the scroll view. This will be your content view. Pin all four edges of this content view to the scroll view with offsets of 0.
Here's a tricky bit. Even though you've pinned the content view to the scroll view, its size of free to grow because that is what allows it to be bigger than the scroll view itself and allow there to be content to scroll over. To keep your scroll view from scrolling horizontally, you need to make sure the content view has the same width as the scroll view on all devices. To do that, find the scroll view and the content view in the Document Outline to the left of the Storyboard. Control-drag from the content view to the scroll view and select Equal Widths from the pop-up.
You still haven't told your content view how tall it should be. For now, give it an explicit height constraint of 1000. That will be enough to scroll.
Now, add your label and slider to the content view. In addition to constraining them to each other and to the edges of the content view, you will need to give your label a width constraint. Then Auto Layout will have all of the information it needs to compute the width of your slider. Auto Layout knows how wide the content view is (which will be different on different devices), it knows how wide your label is, and how far everything is from everything else, so it will just stretch the slider to fill in the rest.
If you do all of this, you will have a UI that is properly sized for all devices in all orientations that scrolls vertically.
Just embed all view in your UIScrollView in a UIView, give it the required constraints then the slider and label will stay.
That worked for me just now.
UIScrollView is special when you want use AutoLayout with it, subviews can not be added directly, it needs a container view to constraint the contentSize of UIScrollView, Auto Layout Guide:Working with Scroll Views explains the detail reason, and you can find many solutions to solve UIScrollView's auto layout on Google, Such as this answer.
To be honest, it's confused and complicated to understand UIScrollView's auto layout, but if you overcome this, others auto layout question is easy to resolve.

What should I do to make generic size of all UI controls in iOS?

I was trying to practice Auto Layout in iOS, and I started with very simple UI. Please see image for understanding my problem.
All the text files are in middle of screen (I have deliberately kept on guide line), still you can see in preview, controls are not fully shown. I have not chosen specific size. Size is 'Inferred' still I am not able to see all the controls on UI.
I tried both adding and removing Auto Layout, but no luck. What should I do to create generic UI which will work with all the sizes of iPhone and iPad.
This image is without use of Auto Layout.
After enable autolayout and size classes you have to apply autolayout constraints.
Autolayout is a detail topic. Few basic things when applying autolayout is:
UI element need four constraints.
position x
Position y
height
width
So you will select first label (Number 1). Then press control and drag to superview. You will be provide options. Select Leading space (This will handle x position)
This is the way you can press control and drag:
http://www.appcoda.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/auto-layout-login-trailing.gif
Go to size inspector. You can see the constraint.
Press edit and change its value to 25(for test).
similarly control and drag again to superview and select Top space. (This will set y position for label)
This is simple way for the above taken from AppCoda
http://www.appcoda.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/auto-layout-control-drag.gif
You can change the value of these constraints according to your need.
UILabel and uitextfield get width and height from their content size. So don't need width and height constraints.
Now when you preview on any device this label will be stick on top left side of screen.
So this is a complete mechanism. You have to apply constraint to every ui element.
Below is a link to very comprehensive tutorial by
http://www.raywenderlich.com/115440/auto-layout-tutorial-in-ios-9-part-1-getting-started-2
At start this tutorial tried to create three views using autolayout. At the end it shows very similar scenario like yours by applying constraints to button and labels.
The problem here is that your constraints are not set correctly to work with every size of iPhone and iPad. You are setting the leading edge constraint to be a fixed size from your view controller's view to the subviews.
The simplest way to solve this issue would be to have a container view that you center in the view controller's view and then use constraints to set 'Center X Alignment Constraint' and 'Center Y Alignment Constraint' to set the container view's center to that of the view controller and then add your subviews to the container view.
As a side note auto layout has a reputation of being hard to learn, you have to put the time in to learn it, I would start with Apple's Auto Layout Guide.

Constraints in ios

I am learning constraints and spent whole day applying them to the following screen.It is not getting displayed properly in landscape mode.Basically i am not getting how to fix vertical space between ,say, label-Welcome to BBBB and textfield-username so that textfield always appears below the label yet the spacing between them is adjusted according to the screens of different size. If i go for Pin\Vertical space, it automatically fixes the constant value.
Remove the label (or just move it out of the way).
Fill the space that you want to resize with a view.
Constrain this view to the objects above and below and to the sides of the parent view.
Put your label into this view and constrain it to the top of this view and centred to it.
You may need to change the constraints on the objects above and below it to stop them from changing height in an unwanted manner.
This new view should now resize as the device changes orientation but the label should remain at the top of it.
Repeat on other areas of your layout (i.e put things that are not moving around as you want them into sub views and constrain these views to resize accordingly). Experiment with using variable heights, fixed heigh constraints and 'equal heights with' constraints on the views that you add to get them to resize as you need.
Edit: but you have a lot of vertically stacked items in that view - you may never get them all to fit into a horizontal orientation. You may need to remove a few, or add a scroll view or force that view only to layout in portrait mode or... Don't forget to check that it works on all devices you are targeting.
#Ali Beadle was right. Since i had a lot of vertically stacked items, lining them up in landscape mode was not possible. So, i went for scrollview.
I have taken a ScrollView first and then a UIView named ContentView on that ScrollView. I have made the width of ContentView equal to the width of parent UIView and kept its height fixed to 568. In my code i set
_contentViewHeight.constant = self.view.frame.size.height;
Now it scrolls in landscape mode while in potrait mode, it does'nt scroll.
I run into Autolayout problems all the time. But I finally figured out a way to overcome a lot of issues that arise from it.
I simply will use a container-View like ScrollView or even a plain old UIView, place all my controls in it. thats it. this makes things a lot easier for autolayout to figure out the constraints. in your case you could just use a UIView.
-start off by removing all the constraints you have I would start by selecting each control in the XIB and see if it has width/height constraint, select it then press the delete key then at the bottom of the project explorer you'll see all the constraints that auto layout has select each one then delete. that should get rid of any complaints that auto-layout might have.
-Place a UIView object inside your main View then
-move all the controls inside it. Then
-add the necessary constraints for the container view so it'll resize in different orientations and don't worry about any constraints inside the container view (auto layout will figure them out automatically).
that does the trick for me usually.

UIImageView resizing issue in UIPageViewController

I'm building a new app and wish to have a "Welcome walkthrough" at the beginning wherein I have a storyboard with a series of images presented in a UIPageViewController. I have it loading the images and all of that just fine, however the images are resized whenever they go beyond being the "previous" or "next" ViewController. I am using Swift to develop.
Here is a video of the issue: http://youtu.be/dXcjjT-8Bk0
I have tried all of the different View Modes (Aspect fit, aspect fill, redraw etc.) and they all behave the same.
I am using Auto-Layout + Size Classes as I wish to simplify the development for different screen sizes. The current constraints I have that make the UIImage appear at the right size are:
Align Centre X to Superview
Top Space to Top Layout Guide
Bottom Space to Bottom Layout Guide + Equals: 50
I am currently using Aspect Fit which gives me the correct image (after they have done their 'resizing behaviour'.
Can anyone guide me further as to how to fix this?
From your video, I noticed that your UIImageView is always "resized" at the top, not at the bottom. This is most certainly because of your autolayout constraint you call "Top Space to Top Layout Guide". While your UIImageView's view controller is being transitioned through your scrolling page view controller, it doesn't know where the top layout guide is, so its topLayoutGuide.length is 0. Only after the animation completes does the view controller get a positive value for topLayoutGuide.length. Yes, the page view controller should be a bit smarter than this, but it's not.
You can either stop using the top layout guide and make an autolayout constraint relative to the top of its superview. Or you can continue to use the top layout guide but account for when it's length is 0. You can do this by making an outlet for your storyboard's NSLayoutConstraint and overriding viewWillLayoutSubviews() in your ViewController containing your UIImageViews:
#IBOutlet weak var topSpaceToTLG: NSLayoutConstraint!
var parentTLGlength: CGFloat = 20
override func viewWillLayoutSubviews() {
if self.topLayoutGuide.length == 0 {
// Lengthen the autolayout constraint to where we know the
// top layout guide will be when the transition completes
topSpaceToTLG.constant = parentTLGlength
} else {
topSpaceToTLG.constant = 0
}
}
This will always put the top of your UIImageView at the top layout guide, assuming that the status bar is always 20 points. Before laying out subviews, it will check to see if the top layout guide length is 0 or not and adjusts your autolayout constraint accordingly. After the transition animation completes, layout is triggered again, and the top layout guide length will be the expected value, so the constraint constant can go back to 0. Even better than hardcoding the value is to pass in the parent view controller's exact length during initialization, accounting for any possible changes to the top layout guide like adding a navigation bar.
From the video I think you could solve this by preventing the UIPageViewController from extending under the top bars.
In xcode you can do this using the attribute inspector for the page view controller by deselecting Extend Edges Under Top Bars.
This should prevent it paging in under the status bar I think helping to avoid the switch you see.
I figured out my problem was that when the view controller began animating the Top and Bottom Layout Guides had no height. The right and left margins didn't either. When the view finished animating they all received a height or width and my view resized itself.
I fixed this problem on my project by adding vertical constraints between my objects and their super view instead of to the Top/Bottom Layout Guide. I also had to change my horizontal constraints to ignore the side margins.
The last issue I came across is that I had to account for the status bar myself. It may or may not be there or it could be a double bar, like when you are using Maps.

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