Question

I define my own my own drawRect method and it is called on 4.2.1 (iOS) 5.0 (iOS) and 4.3.2 (Simulator) sucesfully. But it never called on 3.1.3 (iPhone 2g).

What reason could be for this?

P.S. Since i start write the question i think about my 3.1.3 device is jailbroken. Maybe it is root cause of this strange behaviour.

Upd: To reproduce issue i use next code:

@implementation UIView (MyOwnCategory)
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect
{
    const char * function = __FUNCTION__;
    [NSException raise: @"hi!" format: @"%s", function];
}
@end

exception never happened on 3.1.3 even when i call [super drawRect: rect] explicitly

Answer 1

I wanted to write about Method Swizzling for a few weeks now, and @Kevin Ballard’s comment finally made me do it (thank you for the inspiration, Kevin).

So here’s a solution for your problem using method swizzling which should also work on iOS 3.x:

UIView+Border.h:

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
@interface UIView(Border)
@end

UIView+Border.m:

#import "UIView+Border.h"
#import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>
#import <objc/runtime.h>

@implementation UIView(Border)

- (id)swizzled_initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame
{
    // This is the confusing part (article explains this line).
    id result = [self swizzled_initWithFrame:frame];

    // Safe guard: do we have an UIView (or something that has a layer)?
    if ([result respondsToSelector:@selector(layer)]) {
        // Get layer for this view.
        CALayer *layer = [result layer];
        // Set border on layer.
        layer.borderWidth = 2;
        layer.borderColor = [[UIColor redColor] CGColor];
    }

    // Return the modified view.
    return result;
}

- (id)swizzled_initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder
{
    // This is the confusing part (article explains this line).
    id result = [self swizzled_initWithCoder:aDecoder];

    // Safe guard: do we have an UIView (or something that has a layer)?
    if ([result respondsToSelector:@selector(layer)]) {
        // Get layer for this view.
        CALayer *layer = [result layer];
        // Set border on layer.
        layer.borderWidth = 2;
        layer.borderColor = [[UIColor blueColor] CGColor];
    }

    // Return the modified view.
    return result;
}

+ (void)load
{
    // The "+ load" method is called once, very early in the application life-cycle.
    // It's called even before the "main" function is called. Beware: there's no
    // autorelease pool at this point, so avoid Objective-C calls.
    Method original, swizzle;

    // Get the "- (id)initWithFrame:" method.
    original = class_getInstanceMethod(self, @selector(initWithFrame:));
    // Get the "- (id)swizzled_initWithFrame:" method.
    swizzle = class_getInstanceMethod(self, @selector(swizzled_initWithFrame:));
    // Swap their implementations.
    method_exchangeImplementations(original, swizzle);

    // Get the "- (id)initWithCoder:" method.
    original = class_getInstanceMethod(self, @selector(initWithCoder:));
    // Get the "- (id)swizzled_initWithCoder:" method.
    swizzle = class_getInstanceMethod(self, @selector(swizzled_initWithCoder:));
    // Swap their implementations.
    method_exchangeImplementations(original, swizzle);
}

@end