R – iPhone – strange issue with UIScrollView and touches

Sometimes you have to ask the question before you can find the answer. Dan Ray had a similar problem and solved it with a very different solution.

- (UIView*)hitTest:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event
{
    UIView* result = [super hitTest:point withEvent:event];

    if ([result.superview isKindOfClass:[UIPickerView class]])
    {
        self.scrollEnabled = NO;
    }
    else 
    {
        self.scrollEnabled = YES;    
    }
    return result;
}

I've tested the code and it works fine for me as well. However, this is not really stealing touches from the scroll view, so if anyone knows how to actually steal touches that would be great.

Source: UIPickerView inside UITableView.tableFooterView doesn't receive drag touches

First, a disclaimer. If you set userInteractionEnabled to NO on the UIScrollView, no touch events will be passed to the subviews. So far as I'm aware, there's no way around that with one exception: intercept touch events on the superview of the UIScrollView, and specifically pass those events to the subviews of UIScrollView. To be honest, though, I don't know why you would want to do this. If you're wanting to disable specific UIScrollView functionality (like...well, scrolling) you can do that easily enough without disabling UserInteraction.

If I understand your question, you need tap events to be processed by the UIScrollView and passed to the subviews? In any case (whatever the gesture is), I think what you're looking for is the protocol method gestureRecognizer:shouldRecognizeSimultaneouslyWithGestureRecognizer: in the protocol UIGestureRecognizerDelegate. In your subviews, whatever gesture recognizers you have, set a delegate (probably whatever class is setting the UIGestureReconginzer in the first place) on the gesture recognizer. Override the above method and return YES. Now, this gesture will be recognized along with any other recognizers that might have 'stolen' the gesture (in your case, a tap). Using this method you can even fine tune your code to only send certain kinds of gestures to the subviews or send the gesture only in certain situations. It gives you a lot of control. Just be sure to read about the method, especially this part:

This method is called when recognition of a gesture by either gestureRecognizer or otherGestureRecognizer would block the other gesture recognizer from recognizing its gesture. Note that returning YES is guaranteed to allow simultaneous recognition; returning NO, on the other hand, is not guaranteed to prevent simultaneous recognition because the other gesture recognizer's delegate may return YES.

Of course, there's a caveat: This only applies to gesture recognizers. So you may still have problems if you're trying to use touchesBegan:, touchesEnded, etc to process the touches. You can, of course, use hitTest: to send raw touch events on to the subviews, but why? Why process the events using those methods in UIView, when you can attach a UIGestureRecognizer to a view and get all of that functionality for free? If you need touches processed in a way that no standard UIGestureRecognizer can provide, subclass UIGestureRecognizer and process the touches there. That way you get all the the functionality of a UIGestureRecognizer along with your own custom touch processing. I really think Apple intended for UIGestureRecognizer to replace most (if not all) of the custom touch processing code that developers use on UIView. It allows for code-reuse and it's a lot easier to deal with when mitigating what code processes what touch event.