Question

I have a UITextField and I create it like so:

firstnameField1 = [[UITextField alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(85+320*4, 80, 150, 30)];
    [firstnameField1 setBorderStyle:UITextBorderStyleRoundedRect];
    [firstnameField1 setPlaceholder:@"Firstname"];
    [firstnameField1 setDelegate:self];
    [firstnameField1 setReturnKeyType:UIReturnKeyNext];
    [scrollViewController addSubview:firstnameField1];

When the user taps the return key I want to check if the text field has anything typed into it, if its empty, the user hasn’t typed anything, I want to return and show a label telling the user that field is required to be filled before they can continue, just like you see all over the place.

I do the following to check:

-(BOOL)textFieldShouldReturn:(UITextField *)textField
{
    //Check if the user has typed anything
    if (textField.text == @"") {
        //If not, show 'required' labels
        [firstNameRequiredLbl1 setAlpha:1];
        [surnameRequiredLbl1 setAlpha:1];
        [firstNameRequiredLbl2 setAlpha:1];
        [surnameRequiredLbl2 setAlpha:1];
        return YES;
    }

    //Do all my other stuff, cut out for ease of reading, 100% doesn't affect this anyway

    return YES;
}

I have set a breakpoint on that last method and it jumps right past that if statement whether I type into that textfield or not.

Any ideas? Thanks.

Answer 1

You’ll want to change textField.text == @""

to: textField.text.length == 0 or textField.text isEqualToString:@""

What the == operator is actually doing in this case is checking if the strings are stored in the same area of memory rather than whether or not they contain the same characters.