Question

Edit: Updated to make question more obvious

Edit 2: Made question more accurate to my real-world problem. I’m actually looking to take action if they tap anywhere EXCEPT in an on-screen text-field. Thus, I can’t simply listen for events within the textfield, I need to know if they tapped anywhere in the View.

I’m writing unit tests to assert that a certain action is taken when a gesture recognizer recognizes a tap within certain coordinates of my view. I want to know if I can programmatically create a touch (at specific coordinates) that will be handled by the UITapGestureRecognizer. I’m attempting to simulate the user interaction during a unit test.

The UITapGestureRecognizer is configured in Interface Builder

//MYUIViewControllerSubclass.m

-(IBAction)viewTapped:(UITapGestureRecognizer*)gesture {
  CGPoint tapPoint = [gesture locationInView:self.view];
  if (!CGRectContainsPoint(self.textField, tapPoint)) {
    // Do stuff if they tapped anywhere outside the text field
  }
}

//MYUIViewControllerSubclassTests.m
//What I'm trying to accomplish in my unit test:

-(void)testThatTappingInNoteworthyAreaTriggersStuff {
  // Create fake gesture recognizer and ViewController
  MYUIViewControllerSubclass *vc = [[MYUIViewControllersSubclass alloc] init];
  UITapGestureRecognizer *tgr = [[UITapGestureRecognizer initWithView: vc.view];

  // What I want to do:
  [[ Simulate A Tap anywhere outside vc.textField ]]
  [[  Assert that "Stuff" occured ]]
}

Answer 1

I think you have multiple options here:

1. May be the simplest would be to send a push event action to your view but i don’t think that what you really want since you want to be able to choose where the tap action occurs.

   [yourView sendActionsForControlEvents: UIControlEventTouchUpInside];

2. You could use UI automation tool that is provided with XCode instruments. This blog explains well how to automate your UI tests with script then.

3. There is this solution too that explain how to synthesize touch events on the iPhone but make sure you only use those for unit tests. This sounds more like a hack to me and I will consider this solution as the last resort if the two previous points doesn’t fulfill your need.