Question

I want to build up a sub-UIView in Interface Builder (contained within a UIScrollView) with some UILabels contained, I then want to programmatically “copy” this view adjust its left position (by multiples of its width) to achieve a “floating” left effect inside a UIScrollView. I then want to add this copied UIView back into the UIScrollView with different text for the UILabels.

The problem is I don’t know how and if you can “copy” UIViews.

Answer 1

You can try calling [view copy], but I wouldn’t be surprised if that didn’t work. You can probably use NSKeyedArchiver/NSKeyedUnarchiver to serialize/deserialize the view, but that’s also pretty terrible.

Instead, you probably want to load multiple copies of the view:

1. Move the view you want multiple copies of into its own nib.
2. Make the nib “owned” by your object (whatever class you want to be responsible for loading it).
3. Add an IBOutlet called “myView” or whatever, and assign it to your view.
4. In your class, call something like:

-(UIView)makeMeANewMyView {
  // Load MyView.nib into the myView outlet.
  [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"MyView" owner:self];
  // Take ownership.
  UIView * view = [[self.myView retain] autorelease];
  self.myView = nil;
  return view;
}