Question

I am customizing my UITableView and I figured out how to set the selected color of each cell. In my cellForRowAtIndexPath method, I have the following code:

    UIView *bgColorView = [[UIView alloc] init];
    [bgColorView setBackgroundColor:[UIColor orangeColor]];
    [cell setSelectedBackgroundView:bgColorView];
    [bgColorView release];

But it is a solid orange. I want to make it more slick looking, and have it be a slight gradient from light orange to darker orange. How can I do this?

Answer 1

You’d use Core Graphics (a.k.a. Quartz) to draw a gradient in your view’s -drawRect: method:

CGContextRef ctx = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
CGFloat colors[8] = {1.0, 0.75, 0.30, 0.5, 0.7, 0.2, 1.0, 0.8};
CGColorSpaceRef space = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
CGGradientRef gradient = CGGradientCreateWithColorComponents(space, colors, NULL, 2);
CGContextDrawLinearGradient(ctx, gradient, top, bottom, NULL);

You can limit the area that the gradient fills by creating a path in the current context (ctx) and the clipping to it using CGContextClip(ctx);. top and bottom are CGPoints that define the beginning and end of the gradient.