Simple UIView drawRect not being called - ios

Question

I can't figure out what the problem is here. I have a very simple UIViewController with a very simple viewDidLoad method:
-(void)viewDidLoad {
NSLog(#"making game view");
GameView *v = [[GameView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0,0,320,460)];
[self.view addSubview:v];
[super viewDidLoad];
}
And my GameView is initialized as follows:
#interface GameView : UIView {
and it simply has a new drawRect method:
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect
{
[super drawRect:rect];
NSLog(#"drawing");
}
In my console, I see "making game view" being printed, but "drawing" never is printed. Why? Why isn't my drawRect method in my custom UIView being called. I'm literally just trying to draw a circle on the screen.

Answer 1

Have you tried specifying the frame in the initialization of the view? Because you are creating a custom UIView, you need to specify the frame for the view before the drawing method is called.
Try changing your viewDidLoad to the following:
NSLog(#"making game view");
GameView *v = [[GameView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0,0,320,460)];
if (v == nil)
NSLog(#"was not allocated and/or initialized");
[self.view addSubview:v];
if (v.superview == nil)
NSLog(#"was not added to view");
[super viewDidLoad];
let me know what you get.

Answer 2

Check if your view is being displayed. If a view is not currently on screen, drawRect will not be getting called even if you add the view to its superview. A possibility is that your view is blocked by the some other view.
And as far as I know, you don't need to write [super drawRect];
Note that even if viewDidLoad is called on a view controller it doesn't necessarily indicate the view controller's view is displayed on screen. Example: Assume a view controller A has an ivar where a view controller B is stored and view controller A's view is currently displayed. Also assume B is alloced and inited. Now if some method in A causes B's view to be accessed viewDidLoad in B will be called as a result regardless whether it's displayed.

Answer 3

If you're using a CocoaTouch lib or file you may need to override the initWithCoder method instead of viewDidLoad.
Objective-C:
- (instancetype)initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)coder
{
self = [super initWithCoder:coder];
if (self) {
//Do Stuff Here
}
return self;
}

Answer 4

I had a view that was offscreen, that I would load onscreen and then redraw. However, while cleaning up auto-layout constraints in XCode, it decided my offscreen view should have a frame (0,0,0,0) (x,y,w,h). And with a (0,0) size, the view would never load.
Make sure your NSView has a nonzero frame size, or else drawRect will not be called.