By default, when I observe the value of a UISlider, it only updates once, when the slider is clicked, not continuously, even thought that is the slider's setting.
Is there a way to get the continuous value change of the slider?
UIKit doesn't actively support KVO. You may be getting lucky in that some notifications may make it through the usual mechanisms, but for the most part you shouldn't assume you can use KVO with any UIKit class.
You should instead get your continuous events through the UISlider's associated target's action method.
the continuous updating applies to the calling of the target method of the "value changed" event on the slider. I don't know how to do this with KVO
Related
Can someone please explain the high-level difference between these two methods? In particular, when would you use one over the other, and is there any overlap in terms of the purposes of these methods?
They seem like they serve the same purpose but don't appear to be related at all in documentation, and this has me confused.
beginTrackingWithTouch:withEvent:
1) subclass UIControl
2) Sent to the control when a touch related to the given event enters the control’s bounds.
3) To provide custom tracking behavior (for example, to change the highlight appearance).
To do this, use one or all of the following methods: beginTrackingWithTouch:withEvent:, continueTrackingWithTouch:withEvent:, endTrackingWithTouch:withEvent:
touchesBegan:withEvent:
1) subclass UIResponder
2) Tells the receiver when one or more fingers touch down in a view or window.
3) There are two general kinds of events: touch events and motion events.
The primary event-handling methods for touches are touchesBegan:withEvent:, touchesMoved:withEvent:, touchesEnded:withEvent:, and touchesCancelled:withEvent:.
The parameters of these methods associate touches with their events—especially touches that are new or have changed—and thus allow responder objects to track and handle the touches as the delivered events progress through the phases of a multi-touch sequence.
Any time a finger touches the screen, is dragged on the screen, or lifts from the screen, a UIEvent object is generated. The event object contains UITouch objects for all fingers on the screen or just lifted from it.
Having just run into this today, I think the key difference is that beginTrackingWithTouch and friends are only for tracking - not anything else - in particular not for target/action handling. So if you override touchesBegan, then you'd also be responsible for calling sendActionsForControlEvents when touches ended. But if you use beginTrackingWithTouch, that's handled for free.
I discovered this by implementing beginTrackingWithTouch (for a custom button control) thinking it was just a sideways replacement for handling touchesBegan. So in endTrackingWithTouch, I called sendActionsForControlEvents if touchInside was true. The end result was that the action was called twice, because first the builtin mechanism sent the action, then I called it. In my case, I'm just interesting in customizing highlighting, so took out the call to sendActionsForControlEvents, and all is good.
Summary: use beginTrackingWithTouch when all you need to do is customize tracking, and use touchesBegan when you need to customize the target/action handling (or other low-level details) as well.
If I properly understand Apple documentation:
beginTracking:
Use the provided event information to detect which part of your control was hit and to set up any initial state information
So, it's more for control state configuration.
touchesBegan:
Many UIKit classes override this method and use it to handle the corresponding touch events
This method is more for touch event handling.
I have a view with multiple dynamically created UITextfields and UISegmented controls on it (but for purposes of this question, there could also be UIButtons, UISwitches, UISliders, or anything else that inherits from UIControl). I want to preform an action whenever the user finished interacting with any of the controls, regardless of what subclass of control it belongs to. From looking at other questions, I think I want to use addTarget:action:forControlEvents: to add observers to each of my controls after they are created, but I don't know which event I'm looking for. I've tried all the ones that are listed in the Apple Docs here that seemed relevant but none of them seem to be triggered everytime. I'm looking for something like .LostFocus in VBA, but I can't seem to find out what that is - I know there is a becomeFirstResponder method to make a control active, but I can't find anything like a "lostFirstResponder" event.
I suppose I could use isKindOfClass to tell what kind of control it is, and set up my event accordingly, but that seems a little sloppy and I feel like there should be a more direct way to do it. I could also probably set up a UITapGestureRecognizer and build up something that way, but that still feels like a workaround and not really the way it's supposed to be done.
If you're willing to subclass, you can override -resignFirstResponder to detect lost "focus", and act accordingly. This is probably only useful for things like textfields which can hold first responder status, and would not work for UISwitch for instance.
Since all UIControl objects are just UIViews, you can also override touchesEnded to detect the end of interaction with these elements.. although the more accepted way is to add your dismissal handler method as an action for all the UIControlEvents that indicate end of interaction, or just UIControlEventValueChanged.
More info on UIResponder here from Apple's Documentation:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/uikit/reference/UIResponder_Class/Reference/Reference.html#//apple_ref/occ/instm/UIResponder/resignFirstResponder
Many UIKit classes have delegate methods that indicate when interactions have ended, for instance UITextField has a textFieldDidEndEditing method. UITextView has similar methods.
I'm using an NSDatePicker and NSLevelIndicator to try and set/display certain values of an object. I don't want to use bindings. My first thought would be to try and set a delegate of the date picker/level indicator to be my controller class so that I can be notified when either of those is changed. However, NSDatePicker and NSLevelIndicator don't have a delegate (at least, none that I can see in interface builder). How then do I keep track of when these things are changed?
NSControl and its subclasses use the target / action mechanism to alert you when their value changes. Some delegate protocols work in a similar manner, but in general delegates are used to modify the behavior of an object, while target / action alerts your controller of a change in a UI control.
UPDATE: With the blush of shame I discovered that the order had nothing to do with the speed of tapping. I was calling the visual code before the super touchesEnded:withEvent call, which was why if you tapped really fast, the display never got a chance to draw the highlighted state before being dismissed again. Because the code that was actually causing the main thread to block just a few milliseconds, the highlighted state would stay visible until the main thread unblocked again, where as if you tapped really fast, it looked like nothing happened at all. Moving the super call up to the top of the overridden method fixed it all. Sorry, if any moderator sees this post it can be deleted. shame
This problem must have been asked a 1000 times at SO, yet I can't find the explanation to match my specific issue.
I have a UIButton subclass with a custom design. Of course the design is custom enough that I can't just use the regular setSomething:forControlState: methods. I need a different backgroundcolor on touch, for one, and some icons that need to flash.
To implement these view changes, I (counter-intuitively) put the display code in (A) touchesBegan:withEvent and (Z) touchesEnded:withEvent:, before calling their respective super methods. Feels weird, but it works as intended, or so it seemed at first.
After implementing addTarget:action:forControlEvents was used to bind the UIControlEventTouchUpInside to the method (X) itemTapped:, I would expect these methods to always fire in the order (A)(X)(Z). However, if you tap the screen real fast (or the mouse in simulator), they fire in the order (A)(Z)(X). Where (A) and (Z) follow each other in such rapid succession, that the whole visual feedback for tapping is invisible. This is unwanted behavior. This also can't be the way to go, for so many apps need similar behavior, right?
So my question to you is: What am I doing wrong? One thing I'm guessing is that the visual appearance of the buttons shouldn't be manipulated in the touchesBegan:withEvent and touchesEnded:withEvent, but then where? Or am I missing some other well known fact?
Thanks for the nudge,
Eric-Paul.
I don't know why the order is different, but here's 2 suggestions to help deal with it.
What visual changes are you making to the button? If it's things like changing title/image/background image, you can do all this by modifying the highlighted state of the button. You can set a few properties like title and background image per-state. When the user's finger is down on the button, the highlighted state is turned on, so any changes you make to this state will be visible at this time. Do note that if you're making use of the selected state on the button, then you'll need to also set up the visual appearance for UIControlStateHighlighted|UIControlStateSelected, otherwise it will default back to inheriting from Normal when both highlighted & selected are on.
The other suggestion is to ditch touchesBegan:withEvent: and touchesEnded:withEvent: and switch over to using the methods inherited from UIControl, namely beginTrackingWithTouch:withEvent: and endTrackingWithTouch:withEvent:. You may also want to implement continueTrackingWithTouch:withEvent: and use the touchInside property to turn off your visual tweaks if the touch leaves the control.
How would I get notified of a value of a NSDatePicker, when it's changed?
I've only done it on the iPhone with UIDatePicker but it is similar on the Mac, you register as a delegate and receive messages. See Apple's Docs here.
I should clarify, this tells you when it changed, you still need to call -dateValue to get the date.
The same you would any other control. Options are:
Target/Action
Binding
Observe notification
Delegate
You can bind the picker's value binding to a property of your controller, or a property of a model object (through a controller).