Question

I have a UIButton and I want to add it to multiple UIViews. Later on – I want to remove it from one of the superviews. I am trying it the following way but when I pass the removeFromSuperview message to the button, it gets removed from both the views:

[viewOverlay addSubview:myButton];
[viewButtons addSubview:myButton];

Afterwards I want it to be removed from the viewOverlay only.

[myButton removeFromSuperview];

and this causes the button removed from both the views. Any idea how can I achieve this???

Obaid

Answer 1

when I pass the removeFromSuperview message to the button, it gets
removed from both the views

It might look that way, but myButton was removed from viewOverlay when you added it to viewButtons. From the documentation for -addSubview::

Views can have only one superview. If view already has a superview and
that view is not the receiver, this method removes the previous
superview before making the receiver its new superview.

The only correct solution here is to create two buttons and add one to each of viewOverlay and viewButtons. The two buttons can look the same, have the same target, and perform the same action, so they’ll look like the “same” button from the user’s perspective. But a view can only have one superview at a time. I mean that literally: every view has a superview pointer that points to the view that contains it, and that point can obviously only point to one object at a time.