how to detect touchesbegan touchesended for UIBarButtonItem? - ios

Question

I am using an UIBarButtonItem in order to trigger events. I use the integrated InterfaceBuider in xcode4 to create my UIBarButtonItem and then I connected the button to a method in my view controller. The method looks like this:
-(IBAction)NoteOnOff:(id)sender
{
UIButton *button = (UIButton*)sender;
/* now perform action */
}
Now I want to also detect fingerdown/fingerup because I want to trigger noteon/noteoff types of event for a midi synth kind of app.
1- Is there a way to detect if sender has been pressed down or up in the above method?
2- I tried to subclass UIBarButtonItem and implement touchesBegan and touchesEnded this way:
#interface myUIBarButtonItem : UIBarButtonItem {
}
#end
#implementation myUIBarButtonItem
-(void) touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event{
NSLog(#"touchesBegan");
NSLog(#"touches=%#,event=%#",touches,event);
}
-(void) touchesEnded:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event{
NSLog(#"touchesEnded");
NSLog(#"touches=%#,event=%#",touches,event);
}
#end
Then I changed the class of the UIBarButtonItem to myUIBarButtonItem in the interface editor but no luck. Is that the correct way of using my customized class in the interface editor?
3- I read somewhere that UIBarButtonItem does not inherit from UIResponder so they can't intercept touchesbegan/touchesended events. If that is the case then what is the proper way to be able to detect touches down and touches up events? I am mostly a C/C++ programmer and my knowledge is pretty limited about objective C and the iphone environement. I only know how to use the UI editor and I do not know how create custom UIs and use them without this editor yet.
Bottom line is: what is the simplest way to detect touchdown/touchup with the lest latency possible?
Any pointers to tutorial or docs is also welcome.
Thanks,
Baba

Answer 1

You can do it like this (no need to subclass UIBarButtonItem):
[button addTarget:self action:#selector(touchUp:)
forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];
[button addTarget:self action:#selector(touchDown:)
forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchDown];
- (void) touchUp:(id)sender {
}
- (void) touchDown:(id)sender {
}