Center custom UIView vertically and horizontally using Auto Layout - ios

Question

I'm trying to build a rather simple animated custom UI using the Auto Layout API newly available iOS 6. The custom view I'm building has a circle that I want to be both vertically and horizontally centered.
Unfortunately I can't figure out why my constraints appear to work fine for UIButton, and UILabel elements but yield weird results when I use a custom view with and custom CALayer (in this case a circle, that will eventually be animated).
To be clear I don't want my view to expand to fill the whole screen, but rather to have dynamic "padding" so that the view is vertically centered both on the iPhone 4 and 5. I should also note that I'm very new to Cocoa and UIKit.
RootViewController.m:
...
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
// Create Circle View
CGRect circle_view_rect = CGRectMake(0, 0, 100, 100);
UIView *circle_view = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:circle_view_rect];
// Create Circle Layer
CircleLayer *circle_layer = [[CircleLayer alloc] init];
circle_layer.needsDisplayOnBoundsChange = YES;
circle_layer.frame = circle_view.bounds;
[circle_view.layer addSublayer:circle_layer];
// Enable Auto Layout
[circle_view setTranslatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints:NO];
[self.view addSubview:circle_view];
// Center Vertically
NSLayoutConstraint *centerYConstraint =
[NSLayoutConstraint constraintWithItem:circle_view
attribute:NSLayoutAttributeCenterY
relatedBy:NSLayoutRelationEqual
toItem:self.view
attribute:NSLayoutAttributeCenterY
multiplier:1.0
constant:0.0];
[self.view addConstraint:centerYConstraint];
// Center Horizontally
NSLayoutConstraint *centerXConstraint =
[NSLayoutConstraint constraintWithItem:circle_view
attribute:NSLayoutAttributeCenterX
relatedBy:NSLayoutRelationEqual
toItem:self.view
attribute:NSLayoutAttributeCenterX
multiplier:1.0
constant:0.0];
[self.view addConstraint:centerXConstraint];
}
...
CircleLayer.m:
...
- (void)drawInContext:(CGContextRef)context {
CGContextAddArc(context, 50, 50, 50, 0.0, 2*M_PI, 0);
CGContextSetFillColorWithColor(context, [UIColor yellowColor].CGColor);
CGContextFillPath(context);
}
...
Basically the constraints I've implemented are:
center vertically inside parent view
center horizontally inside parent view
And this is the result I get:
Any help would be greatly appreciated, I've been pondering this one for a few days now.
Thanks

Answer 1

Try adding a height and width constraint to your circle_view. I couldn't even get just a pain square view to appear at all without adding those (using your code, minus the layer stuff).
NSLayoutConstraint *heightConstraint =
[NSLayoutConstraint constraintWithItem:circle_view
attribute:NSLayoutAttributeHeight
relatedBy:NSLayoutRelationEqual
toItem:nil
attribute:NSLayoutAttributeNotAnAttribute
multiplier:1.0
constant:100.0];
[circle_view addConstraint:heightConstraint];
NSLayoutConstraint *widthConstraint =
[NSLayoutConstraint constraintWithItem:circle_view
attribute:NSLayoutAttributeWidth
relatedBy:NSLayoutRelationEqual
toItem:nil
attribute:NSLayoutAttributeNotAnAttribute
multiplier:1.0
constant:100.0];
[circle_view addConstraint:widthConstraint];

Answer 2

Just to add to rdelmar's answer:
The core issue is that as soon as you go the NSLayoutConstraint route, and specify setTranslatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints:NO, the frame you made with CGRectMake is rendered irrelevant for AutoLayout purposes. That's why it didn't use the info from the frame's height and width.