pompopo / MessageComposerView

Custom UIView that sticks to the keyboard like in iMessage

MessageComposerView

If you find yourself needing a UITextView that sticks to the keyboard similar to an inputAccessoryView that does not disappear when the keyboard hides, you'll quickly find that you'll likely have to build out a fairly time consuming custom view. MessageComposerView aims to save you all that setup time and headache and provide a simple, customizable implementation.

Rather that being an inputAccessoryView, it is a custom UIView that will automatically "stick" the keyboard, handling rotation, text changes and keyboard state changes.

Usage

####Setup In your header file:

1. Import the MessageComosposerView.h file
2. Add the MessageComposerViewDelegate delegate
3. Optionally create a MessageComposerView property for your message composer view.

Example:

#import "MessageComposerView.h"
@interface ViewController : UIViewController<MessageComposerViewDelegate>
@property (nonatomic, strong) MessageComposerView *messageComposerView;
@end

In your class file, instantiate and add MessageComposerView to the bottom of your view controller. You can do this automatically via loadNibNamed:

self.messageComposerView = [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"MessageComposerView" owner:nil options:nil][0];
self.messageComposerView.delegate = self;
[self.view addSubview:self.messageComposerView];

Or manually via initWithFrame:

// standard size is (320, 54) but a custom size will also be respected
float defaultWidth  = 320;
float defaultHeight = 54;
CGRect subviewFrame = CGRectMake(0, self.view.frame.size.height-defaultHeight, defaultWidth, defaultHeight);
self.messageComposerView = [[MessageComposerView alloc] initWithFrame:subviewFrame];
[self.view addSubview:self.messageComposerView];

If you need to offset the MessageComposerView from the keyboard by a certain fixed amount you can use initWithFrame:andKeyboardOffset: instead. This can be useful when using a UITabBarController or when adding your own custom elements below the MessageComposerView.

// standard size is (320, 54) but a custom size will also be respected
float defaultWidth  = 320;
float defaultHeight = 54;
CGRect subviewFrame = CGRectMake(0, 0, defaultWidth, defaultHeight);
self.messageComposerView = [[MessageComposerView alloc] initWithFrame:subviewFrame andKeyboardOffset:20];
self.messageComposerView.delegate = self;
[self.view addSubview:self.messageComposerView];

####Delegation The MessageComposerViewDelegate has several delegate methods:

1. - (void)messageComposerSendMessageClickedWithMessage:(NSString*)message;
   Required - Triggered whenever the user presses the send button. message is the text within the UITextView at the time the button was pressed.

2. - (void)messageComposerFrameDidChange:(CGRect)frame withAnimationDuration:(float)duration;
   Optional - Triggered whenever the UITextView frame is reconfigured. frame is the CGRect that was applied to the MessageComposerView container.

3. - (void)messageComposerUserTyping;
   Optional - Triggered whenever the UITextView text changes.

How it works

MessageComposerView tries to avoid hooking into UIKeyboardWillShowNotification and UIKeyboardDidShowNotification as I found them to be at times excessive and difficult to properly manipulate, especially when it came to rotation. Instead the UIKeyboardWillShowNotification notification is used solely to dynamically determine the keyboard animation duration on your device before any animations occur.

The actual resizing of the views is handled via layoutSubviews and through the following UITextViewDelegate methods:

• - (void)textViewDidBeginEditing:(UITextView*)textView
• - (void)textViewDidEndEditing:(UITextView*)textView

Contact

If you need to contact me you can do so via my twitter @alexgophermix or through my website thegameengine.org