Drawing filled circles with letters in iOS 7 - ios

Question

The new ios 7 phone app has a favorites section. In that section the names of the contact appear next to a filled in circle with the inital of the contact inside the circle.
How is this drawn? With drawrect or is there already and object created for this?

Answer 1

Below is a UIView subclass that will do what you want. It will correctly size and position 1 or more letters in the circle. Here's how it looks with 1-3 letters at various sizes (32, 64, 128, 256):
With the availability of user defined runtime attributes in Interface Builder, you can even configure the view from within IB. Just set the text property as a runtime attribute and the backgroundColor to the color you want for the circle.
Here's the code:
#interface MELetterCircleView : UIView
/**
* The text to display in the view. This should be limited to
* just a few characters.
*/
#property (nonatomic, strong) NSString *text;
#end
#interface MELetterCircleView ()
#property (nonatomic, strong) UIColor *circleColor;
#end
#implementation MELetterCircleView
- (instancetype)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame text:(NSString *)text
{
NSParameterAssert(text);
self = [super initWithFrame:frame];
if (self)
{
self.text = text;
}
return self;
}
// Override to set the circle's background color.
// The view's background will always be clear.
-(void)setBackgroundColor:(UIColor *)backgroundColor
{
self.circleColor = backgroundColor;
[super setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]];
}
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect
{
CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
[self.circleColor setFill];
CGContextAddArc(context, CGRectGetMidX(rect), CGRectGetMidY(rect),
CGRectGetWidth(rect)/2, 0, 2*M_PI, YES);
CGContextFillPath(context);
[self drawSubtractedText:self.text inRect:rect inContext:context];
}
- (void)drawSubtractedText:(NSString *)text inRect:(CGRect)rect
inContext:(CGContextRef)context
{
CGContextSaveGState(context);
// Magic blend mode
CGContextSetBlendMode(context, kCGBlendModeDestinationOut);
CGFloat pointSize =
[self optimumFontSizeForFont:[UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:100.f]
inRect:rect
withText:text];
UIFont *font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:pointSize];
// Move drawing start point for centering label.
CGContextTranslateCTM(context, 0,
(CGRectGetMidY(rect) - (font.lineHeight/2)));
CGRect frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, CGRectGetWidth(rect), font.lineHeight)];
UILabel *label = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:frame];
label.font = font;
label.text = text;
label.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentCenter;
label.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
[label.layer drawInContext:context];
// Restore the state of other drawing operations
CGContextRestoreGState(context);
}
-(CGFloat)optimumFontSizeForFont:(UIFont *)font inRect:(CGRect)rect
withText:(NSString *)text
{
// For current font point size, calculate points per pixel
CGFloat pointsPerPixel = font.lineHeight / font.pointSize;
// Scale up point size for the height of the label.
// This represents the optimum size of a single letter.
CGFloat desiredPointSize = rect.size.height * pointsPerPixel;
if ([text length] == 1)
{
// In the case of a single letter, we need to scale back a bit
// to take into account the circle curve.
// We could calculate the inner square of the circle,
// but this is a good approximation.
desiredPointSize = .80*desiredPointSize;
}
else
{
// More than a single letter. Let's make room for more.
desiredPointSize = desiredPointSize / [text length];
}
return desiredPointSize;
}
#end