Iphone – Dynamically Changing Keyboard Type for a UISearchBar

cocoa-touchiphoneuisearchbar

I have an iPhone app that uses a UISearchBar and UISearchDisplayController. The search bar has three scope buttons. I would like the keyboard to be a numeric keypad when a particular scope button is selected, but be a default keyboard when any other scope button is selected.

I have implemented the UISearchBarDelegate selectedScopeButtonIndexDidChange:selectedScope method as follows:

- (void)searchBar:(UISearchBar *)searchBar selectedScopeButtonIndexDidChange:(NSInteger)selectedScope
{
    switch (selectedScope) {
        case DeviceIDScopeIndex:
            searchBar.keyboardType = UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad;
            break;
        default:
            searchBar.keyboardType = UIKeyboardTypeDefault;
            break;
    }
}

I know that the method gets called, and the right case gets triggered when the button in question is selected. But the onscreen keyboard doesn't change unless I tap the Cancel button to hide the keyboard, then tap the search field again to bring up the keyboard again.

Is there a way to get the keyboard to change itself while it's onscreen, or to programmatically hide it and then reshow it?

Best Answer

If you're using iOS 3.2 or newer, you can call:

[searchBar reloadInputViews]

and it switches immediately without hackery. At least this works for me on a UITextField. (I mention this because the resign/become first responder trick didn't work exactly right for me, but reloadInputViews did.)

Related Solutions

Iphone – UISearchbar clearButton forces the keyboard to appear

This is an old question and I just came across the same issue and managed to solve it the following way:

When the searchBar:textDidChange: method of the UISearchBarDelegate gets called because of the user tapping the 'clear' button, the searchBar hasn't become the first responder yet, so we can take advantage of that in order to detect when the user in fact intended to clear the search and not bring focus to the searchBar and/or do something else.

To keep track of that, we need to declare a BOOL ivar in our viewController that is also the searchBar delegate (let's call it shouldBeginEditing) and set it with an initial value of YES (supposing our viewController class is called SearchViewController):

@interface SearchViewController : UIViewController <UISearchBarDelegate> {
    // all of our ivar declarations go here...
    BOOL shouldBeginEditing;
    ....
}

...
@end



@implementation SearchViewController
...
- (id)initWithNibName:(NSString *)nibNameOrNil bundle:(NSBundle *)nibBundleOrNil {
    if ((self = [super initWithNibName:nibNameOrNil bundle:nibBundleOrNil])) {
        ...
        shouldBeginEditing = YES;
    }
}
...
@end

Later on, in the UISearchBarDelegate, we implement the searchBar:textDidChange: and searchBarShouldBeginEditing: methods:

- (void)searchBar:(UISearchBar *)bar textDidChange:(NSString *)searchText {
    NSLog(@"searchBar:textDidChange: isFirstResponder: %i", [self.searchBar isFirstResponder]);
    if(![searchBar isFirstResponder]) {
        // user tapped the 'clear' button
        shouldBeginEditing = NO;
        // do whatever I want to happen when the user clears the search...
    }
}


- (BOOL)searchBarShouldBeginEditing:(UISearchBar *)bar {
    // reset the shouldBeginEditing BOOL ivar to YES, but first take its value and use it to return it from the method call
    BOOL boolToReturn = shouldBeginEditing;
    shouldBeginEditing = YES;
    return boolToReturn;
}

Basically, that's it.

Best

Objective-c – Cocoa Touch – UISearchBar Keyboard – Hide ‘Search’ Button

SOLVED. I just used a textfield instead upon the searchbar so it looks similar.

Related Topic