Objective-c – Custom UINavigationBar Background

iphoneobjective c

I've been trying to set up a custom background for the whole of my NavigationBar (not just the titleView) but have been struggling.

I found this thread

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1649012&tstart=0

But am not sure how to implement the code snippet that is given. Is the code implemented as a new class? Also where do I instatiate the UINavigationController as I have an application built with the NavigationView template so it is not done in my root controller as per the example

Best Answer

Uddhav and leflaw are right. This code works nicely:

@interface CustomNavigationBar : UINavigationBar
@end

@implementation CustomNavigationBar
-(void) drawRect:(CGRect)rect 
{
    UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed: @"myNavBarImage"];
    [image drawInRect:CGRectMake(0, 0, self.frame.size.width, self.frame.size.height)];
}
@end

// this can go anywhere
+(UINavigationController*) myCustomNavigationController
{
  MyViewController *vc = [[[MyViewController alloc] init] autorelease];
  UINavigationController *nav = [[[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"CustomNavigationController" owner:self options:nil] objectAtIndex:0];
  nav.viewControllers = [NSArray arrayWithObject:vc];
  return nav;
}

You have to create CustomNavigationController.xib and put a UINavigationController in it and change the navigationBar class to "CustomNavigationBar".

Compare method

Either you implement a compare-method for your object:

- (NSComparisonResult)compare:(Person *)otherObject {
    return [self.birthDate compare:otherObject.birthDate];
}

NSArray *sortedArray = [drinkDetails sortedArrayUsingSelector:@selector(compare:)];

NSSortDescriptor (better)

or usually even better:

NSSortDescriptor *sortDescriptor;
sortDescriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"birthDate"
                                           ascending:YES];
NSArray *sortedArray = [drinkDetails sortedArrayUsingDescriptors:@[sortDescriptor]];

You can easily sort by multiple keys by adding more than one to the array. Using custom comparator-methods is possible as well. Have a look at the documentation.

Blocks (shiny!)

There's also the possibility of sorting with a block since Mac OS X 10.6 and iOS 4:

NSArray *sortedArray;
sortedArray = [drinkDetails sortedArrayUsingComparator:^NSComparisonResult(Person *a, Person *b) {
    return [a.birthDate compare:b.birthDate];
}];

Performance

The -compare: and block-based methods will be quite a bit faster, in general, than using NSSortDescriptor as the latter relies on KVC. The primary advantage of the NSSortDescriptor method is that it provides a way to define your sort order using data, rather than code, which makes it easy to e.g. set things up so users can sort an NSTableView by clicking on the header row.

Ios – Make UINavigationBar transparent

If anybody is wondering how to achieve this in iOS 7+, here's a solution (iOS 6 compatible too)

In Objective-C

[self.navigationBar setBackgroundImage:[UIImage new]
                         forBarMetrics:UIBarMetricsDefault];
self.navigationBar.shadowImage = [UIImage new];
self.navigationBar.translucent = YES;

In swift 3 (iOS 10)

self.navigationBar.setBackgroundImage(UIImage(), for: .default)
self.navigationBar.shadowImage = UIImage()
self.navigationBar.isTranslucent = true

In swift 2

self.navigationBar.setBackgroundImage(UIImage(), forBarMetrics: .Default)
self.navigationBar.shadowImage = UIImage()
self.navigationBar.translucent = true

Discussion

Setting translucent to YES on the navigation bar does the trick, due to a behavior discussed in the UINavigationBar documentation. I'll report here the relevant fragment:

If you set this property to YES on a navigation bar with an opaque custom background image, the navigation bar will apply a system opacity less than 1.0 to the image.