UIButton + XIB subviews = no highlight - uibutton

Question

I have a UIButton and this button loads a subview from an xib.
Everything is drawn fine and the delegate method is called correctly but there's no highlight effect.
I have everything on the xib set as userInteractionEnabled=false.
If I remove those subviews, the highlight effect works again.

Answer 1

If all your subviews happen to be images, there is a crazy solution: create multiple UIButtons as subviews and tie their highlight / disabled states together. Add them all as subviews of a master button, disable user interaction, and use a K-V observer on the master button. Here's a quick example:
// Only perform the addObserver part if from a XIB
- (UIButton *) makeMasterButton {
// Create some buttons
UIButton *masterButton = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];
masterButtonFrame = CGRectMake(0,0,100,100);
UIButton *slaveButton1 = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];
slaveButton1.userInteractionEnabled = NO;
[slaveButton1 setImage:[UIImage imageNamed:#"Top.png"]];
slaveButton1.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0,100,50);
[masterButton addSubview:slaveButton1];
UIButton *slaveButton2 = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];
slaveButton2.userInteractionEnabled = NO;
[slaveButton2 setImage:[UIImage imageNamed:#"Bottom.png"]];
slaveButton2.frame = CGRectMake(0,50,100,50);
[masterButton addSubview:slaveButton2];
// Secret sauce: add a K-V observer
[masterButton addObserver:self forKeyPath:#"highlighted" options:(NSKeyValueObservingOptionNew) context:NULL];
[masterButton addObserver:self forKeyPath:#"enabled" options:(NSKeyValueObservingOptionNew) context:NULL];
return masterButton;
}
...
- (void)observeValueForKeyPath:(NSString *)keyPath ofObject:(id)object change:(NSDictionary *)change context:(void *)context {
if ([object isKindOfClass:[UIButton class]]) {
UIButton *button = (UIButton *)object;
for (id subview in button.subviews) {
if ([subview isKindOfClass:[UIButton class]]) {
UIButton *buttonSubview = (UIButton *) subview;
buttonSubview.highlighted = button.highlighted;
buttonSubview.enabled = button.enabled;
}
}
}
}
I had to do this once when I wanted to have an "image" for a UIButton that had layers, transparency and dynamically loaded content.

Answer 2

You can convert the view you've loaded from the xib into a UIImage and add that image to the UIButton instead. This way the highlight will be shown when the button is pressed:
UIButton *button;
UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(viewFromXib.frame.size);
[viewFromXib.layer renderInContext:UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()];
UIImage *image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
[button setImage:image forState:UIControlStateNormal];