Question

I am drawing a circle in the -drawRect: method of my UIView using the standard CGContextFillEllipseInRect() code. However, I would like to slightly pulse (make larger and smaller) and change the intensity of the color fill with an animation. For example, if the circle is filled with red I would like to pulse the circle and make the red slightly lighter and darker in-time with the pulsing action. Not having much experience with Core Animation I am a bit lost about how to do this, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

This is much simpler if you don’t draw the circle in drawRect:. Instead, set up your view to use a CAShapeLayer, like this:

@implementation PulseView

+ (Class)layerClass {
    return [CAShapeLayer class];
}

The system sends layoutSubviews to your view whenever it changes size (including when it first appears). We override layoutSubviews to set up the shape and animate it:

- (void)layoutSubviews {
    [self setLayerProperties];
    [self attachAnimations];
}

Here’s how we set the layer’s path (which determines its shape) and the fill color for the shape:

- (void)setLayerProperties {
    CAShapeLayer *layer = (CAShapeLayer *)self.layer;
    layer.path = [UIBezierPath bezierPathWithOvalInRect:self.bounds].CGPath;
    layer.fillColor = [UIColor colorWithHue:0 saturation:1 brightness:.8 alpha:1].CGColor;
}

We need to attach two animations to the layer – one for the path and one for the fill color:

- (void)attachAnimations {
    [self attachPathAnimation];
    [self attachColorAnimation];
}

Here’s how we animate the layer’s path:

- (void)attachPathAnimation {
    CABasicAnimation *animation = [self animationWithKeyPath:@"path"];
    animation.toValue = (__bridge id)[UIBezierPath bezierPathWithOvalInRect:CGRectInset(self.bounds, 4, 4)].CGPath;
    animation.timingFunction = [CAMediaTimingFunction functionWithName:kCAMediaTimingFunctionEaseInEaseOut];
    [self.layer addAnimation:animation forKey:animation.keyPath];
}

Here’s how we animate the layer’s fill color:

- (void)attachColorAnimation {
    CABasicAnimation *animation = [self animationWithKeyPath:@"fillColor"];
    animation.fromValue = (__bridge id)[UIColor colorWithHue:0 saturation:.9 brightness:.9 alpha:1].CGColor;
    [self.layer addAnimation:animation forKey:animation.keyPath];
}

Both of the attach*Animation methods use a helper method that creates a basic animation and sets it up to repeat indefinitely with autoreverse and a one second duration:

- (CABasicAnimation *)animationWithKeyPath:(NSString *)keyPath {
    CABasicAnimation *animation = [CABasicAnimation animationWithKeyPath:keyPath];
    animation.autoreverses = YES;
    animation.repeatCount = HUGE_VALF;
    animation.duration = 1;
    return animation;
}