Touch events on UITableView's backgroundView - ios

Question

I've got a UITableViewController, and the tableView has a view as backgroundView (even more, it's a MKMapView), set with
self.tableView.backgroundView = _mapView;
Currently the background view is showing on the screen (I also have a transparent table header to achieve this). I'm not able to make the mapView (tableView's backgroundView) respond to user interaction. My table header, which is above the map view, is a subclass of UIView with the following override:
- (UIView *)hitTest:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event
{
LogDebug(#"Clic en transparent view");
if (_transparent)
{
return nil;
}
return [super hitTest:point withEvent:event];
}
so it's supposed to pass through the events; I don't know what's wrong, and didn't find any solution in other similar questions.
I must keep the mapView as the tableView's background property, so please take this into account.
Any idea?

Answer 1

it's relatively late to answer the question. But I ran into this problem on my own project, and after some research I got the answer. First off, I didn't assign the view in the back to tableView.backgroundView. Instead, I made the tableView.backgroundColor transparent then put another view under the table view.
EDIT:
by "under the table" I mean the tableView and the anotherView are children to the same parent view and tableView.zPosition is greater than anotherView.zPosition.
Then all I did is override the tableView:
(BOOL)pointInside:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event
and let the tableView avoid holding the events that are not in its cells.
Here's the code:
-(BOOL)pointInside:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
/// the height of the table itself.
float height = self.bounds.size.height + self.contentOffset.y;
/// the bounds of the table.
/// it's strange that the origin of the table view is actually the top-left of the table.
CGRect tableBounds = CGRectMake(0, 0, self.bounds.size.width, height);
return CGRectContainsPoint(tableBounds, point);
}
it works like a charm for me. hope it'll help any other people who run into this problem.

Answer 2

I guess that the touchEvents cant be passed to tableView's backgroundView.
So, what i did is ,
For headerView which is a subclass of UIVIEW, i added a class property as mapView.
In HeaderView.h
#property (nonatomic,assign) UIView *mapView;
And, in tableViewController
-(UIView *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView viewForHeaderInSection:(NSInteger)section{
HeaderView *view =[[TestView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 200, 100)];
view.mapView =tableView.backgroundView;
return view;
}
And override hitTest in HeaderView and return this mapView.
-(UIView *)hitTest:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event{
return self.mapView;
}
Now the mapView receives that touchEvent and responds accordingly..Add extra code that you might interest.
Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Santhu answer almost worked for me, I passed hit test to mapView instead of just returning it, also I needed to made a point check because I wanted only header touch events passing through so there is my version of hit test on the HeaderView:
-(UIView *)hitTest:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event{
if(point.y > self.frame.size.height){
return nil;
}
return [self.mapView hitTest:point withEvent:event];
}

Answer 4

Put this in a UITableView subclass, the downside is you can no longer tap cells but it hopefully is a pointer in the right direction.
- (void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event{}

Answer 5

FYI, this is an old post, and UITableView.backgroundView does receive touches now. So, if your content in your backgroundView isn't receiving touches it's due to some other issue.