I have 2 tappable labels grouped within a parent view (The attached screenshot shows 3 of these views). Currently the size of each label is set to fit its content. Therefore a tap gesture is only recognized when the tap is directly on the text. I want to be able to tap above or below the text (but within its parent view) so that a tapped label is triggered. What type of constraints would I need to add between the views so that I’m able to do this?
You could add minimum widths and heights to the labels, and that might do what you want (width >= minimum). Alternatively, you could add these labels as the child of a larger UIView that does the gesture recognition. You should add constraints to that UIView so that it expands as the UILabels expand, and again, you'd still need minimum widths and heights.
You would add a height constraint to each label. This is not normally needed, because a label has an intrinsic content size (intrinsicContentSize) that is used to generate its height automatically, through two low-priority constraints that cause the label to resist getting larger than or smaller than the intrinsic height. But if you simply add a height constraint, you can make the label taller, overriding the intrinsic content size; this works because your constraint has a higher priority than the intrinsic height constraints.
Related
I'm working on an app that supports dynamic type. I have a simple UIView that is used as the footer in a table. Within that view is just a UIButton. When the user increases the dynamic type size, the text in the button's label grows, and I need the button itself, and the containing view to both grow appropriately. How can I achieve this?
Thanks,
The UIButton class has an intrinsic size, meaning that if you don't constrain it to a specific size it will size itself to a size that will fit its content. This also means that you can tie your button to the edges of a parent UIView and let the button control the size of the parent. This will happen automatically as long as you don't explicitly constrain the size of the UIButton or UIView.
If you want to, you can choose to set a constraint on one axis and have the button control the size of the other, for example let the button control the height of your footer, but always use a fixed width for the footer. In this case you add constraints to the width or left/right of your footer.
Read more on controls that supports intrinsic sizes
If you need space around the button label you can add it by increasing the content insets.
I have a cell in which I place four buttons and four labels. Each button gets assigned a picture with width 50 and height 50. Furthermore, all buttons have a corresponding label describing what they're intended for.
My objective is to have the buttons and labels resize to keep the buttons' and labels' aspect ration intact while the screen dimension changes on different devices. I have been playing with auto layout changing the hugging and compression to achieve this but haven't been successful yet. Any help would be much appreciated...
I think you should take a look at a UIStackView, because this seems exactly as a use case for stack. Just put each pair button/label in a stack, and then all four pairs into a horizontal stack, which you constraint to the cell itself. You should be able to handle all you need just by configuring the stack’s properties (axis, distribution, alignment, spacing).
Embed your button and label into a view. Set the width of this view equal widths to content view and change the multiplier value to 1:4. This will adjust the widths of the views according to superview. Also, set the top and bottom constraint to 0 for this view.
Provide center align y-axis constraint to button after setting the width and height constraint to 50. Set its top constraint to a value you deem fit.
Set labels's leading and trailing constraint to a value like 8. Choose center alignment for text. Also, provide top constraint to buttona nd bottom to its superview.
Copy the view and paste to create the three views and provide them equal widths constraint to the first view. Also, provide their leading, trailing, top and bottom constraints.
Here are a fast tutorial in how to achieve that:
1-
2- completion of the first Gif:
Note you can achieve the same output using a UIStackView
I have a label inside a scrollview that has can be as few as 1 lines and as many as 10 lines. I'm having trouble figuring out how to make the scrollview content size dynamic so that it will stretch accordingly.
I tried adding a height constraint of >= 100 (arbitrary number) but then it complained about it being an Inequality Constraint Ambiguity.
Quick answer
Remove the current height constraint on your label.
Ensure the labels Lines property is set to 0 and Line Breaks is set to Word Wrap.
Add vertical spacing constraints to the views above and below the label.
Ensure that every view has vertical spacing constraints from the top to bottom margins, in order for the scroll view to infer the height of its contentView.
Explanation
In order for the scroll view to infer its content size it must have constraints from margin to subviews to margin - imagine it like a balloon the content is the air inside that pushes on the wall to make the balloon the size it is. The constraints from the subviews to margins allow the size of the subviews to push the walls of the content view out.
For the label setting the Lines property to 0 means it will have a variable amount of lines just as you want. The Line Breaks property being set to Word Wrap means it will ensure words are not cut off (truncated) or broken up into characters and instead pushed onto the next line as whole words.
If you don't specify a height constraint for a UILabel it will take a height that fits the whole text. Just make sure that number of lines is set to 0 and that your label has all the margin constraints set.
This tech note from Apple explains how to correctly configure a scrollview with scrollable content using auto layout only https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/technotes/tn2154/_index.html.
Conceptually, in your case, this is what you need to do:
View hierarchy:
MainView -> ScrollView -> ContentView -> UILabel
Scrollview is constrained to all edges of the main view,
ContentView is constrained to all edges of the ScrollView
and the UILabel is constrained to all edges of the ContentView (set UILabel number of lines to 0 and remove the height constraint you currently have applied)
The key here is to realise that the size of the contentView only depends on the size of the UILabel so as the UILabel height stretches so does the contentView. This will allow the scrollView to automatically infer the contentSize and enable scrolling if required.
I have a multiline UILabel inside a custom keyboard extension. I want this label to grow to fill the content up to a certain height, at which point I want it to just cut off the rest of the text.
Because the keyboard has different heights depending on the device and orientation, I can't just set a simple less than or equal height constraint.
What I tried was to constrain the bottom of the label to the top of the buttons below, with a greater than or equal constraint. This works to a certain extent, but causes the keyboard to grow in size as opposed to the label being forced to cut off its text.
How would I force the label to a max height, without directly using a height constraint on the label?
Put the label in a UIView and constrain the view's height to less than or equal.
I cant for the love of god the the hang of this resizing superview.
I have a UIView *superview with 4 UILabels. 2 function as header for the 2 others.
The content in all 4 are dynamic coming from database.
SizeToFit vs SizeThatFits:(CGSize) vs UIView systemLayoutSizeFittingSize:, passing either UILayoutFittingCompressedSize or UILayoutFittingExpandedSize.
I use autolayout programatically and have set the superview height to be equal or greater to a dummy number.
where and how do I use these SizeToFit vs sizeThatFits:(CGSize) vs UIView systemLayoutSizeFittingSize:, passing either UILayoutFittingCompressedSize or UILayoutFittingExpandedSize. I have read a lot of tips here on stack but ended up with nothing.
DO I need to recalculate the constraints for the superview somewhere specific. Maby setting the height to be ´#property` in its controller class and remove and readd it?
Atm I have tried to put everything everywhere and then some. Still I get the same size end result with the dummy height and text floating outside. Even after setting clipsToBound on subview.
I am scratching my hair of.. help
If you're using Auto Layout, here's what you need to do:
Make sure you aren't adding fixed width and/or height constraints to any of your subviews (depending on which dimension(s) you want to dynamically size). The idea is to let the intrinsic content size of each subview determine the subview's height. UILabels come with 4 automatic implicit constraints which will (with less than Required priority) attempt to keep the label's frame at the exact size required to fit all the text inside.
Make sure that the edges of each label are connected rigidly (with Required priority constraints) to the edges of each other and their superview. You want to make sure that if you imagine one of the labels growing in size, this would force the other labels to make room for it and most importantly force the superview to expand as well.
Only add constraints to the superview to set its position, not size (at least, not for the dimension(s) you want it to size dynamically). Remember that if you set the internal constraints up correctly, its size will be determined by the sizes of all the subviews, since its edges are connected to theirs in some fashion.
That's it. You don't need to call sizeToFit or systemLayoutSizeFittingSize: to get this to work, just load your views and set the text and that should be it. The system layout engine will do the calculations for you to solve your constraints. (If anything, you might need to call setNeedsLayout on the superview...but this shouldn't be required.)
Use container views
In the following example I have a 30x30 image, and the UILabel is smaller than the containing view with the placeholder text. I needed the containing view to be at least as big as the image, but it needed to grow to contain multi-line text.
In visual format the inner container looks like this:
H:|-(15.0)-[image(30.0)]-(15.0)-[label]-(15.0)-|
V:|[image(30.0)]|
V:|[label(>=30.0)]|
Then, set the containing view to match the height of the label. Now the containing view will ride the size of the label.
As #smileyborg pointed out in his answer, connecting the content rigidly to the superview informs the layout engine that the simple container view should cause it to grow.
Yellow alignment rectangles
If you want the yellow alignment rectangles add -UIViewShowAlignmentRects YES in your scheme's list of run arguments.
This almost follows #smileyborg answer and comes with a concrete example.
Won't describe all constraints, but those related to the calculation of the height of UI objects.
[Label] Labels must not have a fixed height constraint, in this case, AutoLayout won't resize labels to fit the text, so setting edge constraints is the key. (green arrows)
[Subview] Steps 1 and 3 are very easy to follow, but this step can be misunderstood. As in the case with labels, subviews must not have height constraint set. All subviews must have top constraint set, ignoring bottom constraint, which can make you think will trigger unsatisfied constraint exception at runtime, but it won't if you set bottom constraint for the last subview. Missing to do so will blow the layout. (red arrows)
[Superview] Set all constraints the way you need, but pay big attention to the
height constraint. Assign it a random value, but make it optional, AutoLayout will set the height exactly to fit the subviews. (blue arrows)
This works perfectly, there is no need to call any additional system-layout update methods.
This was made dramatically easier with the introduction of Stack Views in iOS 9. Use a stack view inside your view to contain all your content that resizes, and then simply call
view.setNeedsUpdateConstraints()
view.updateConstraintsIfNeeded()
view.setNeedsLayout()
view.layoutIfNeeded()
after changing your content. Then you can get your new size by calling
view.systemLayoutSizeFittingSize(UILayoutFittingCompressedSize)
if you ever need to calculate the exact size required for a view.