Question

I’m trying to create a UIView which shows a semitransparent circle with an opaque border inside its bounds. I want to be able to change the bounds in two ways – inside a -[UIView animateWithDuration:animations:] block and in a pinch gesture recogniser action which fires several times a second. I’ve tried three approaches based on answers elsewhere on SO, and none are suitable.

1. Setting the corner radius of the view’s layer in layoutSubviews gives smooth translations, but the view doesn’t stay circular during animations; it seems that cornerRadius isn’t animatable.

2. Drawing the circle in drawRect: gives a consistently circular view, but if the circle gets too big then resizing in the pinch gesture gets choppy because the device is spending too much time redrawing the circle.

3. Adding a CAShapeLayer and setting its path property in layoutSublayersOfLayer, which doesn’t animate inside UIView animations since path isn’t implicitly animatable.

Is there a way for me to create a view which is consistently circular and smoothly resizable? Is there some other type of layer I could use to take advantage of the hardware acceleration?

UPDATE

A commenter has asked me to expand on what I mean when I say that I want to change the bounds inside a -[UIView animateWithDuration:animations:] block. In my code, I have a view which contains my circle view. The circle view (the version that uses cornerRadius) overrides -[setBounds:] in order to set the corner radius:

-(void)setBounds:(CGRect)bounds
{
    self.layer.cornerRadius = fminf(bounds.size.width, bounds.size.height) / 2.0;
    [super setBounds:bounds];
}

The bounds of the circle view are set in -[layoutSubviews]:

-(void)layoutSubviews
{
    // some other layout is performed and circleRadius and circleCenter are
    // calculated based on the properties and current size of the view.

    self.circleView.bounds = CGRectMake(0, 0, circleRadius*2, circleRadius*2);
    self.circleView.center = circleCenter;
}

The view is sometimes resized in animations, like so:

[UIView animateWithDuration:0.33 animations:^(void) {
    myView.frame = CGRectMake(x, y, w, h);
    [myView setNeedsLayout];
    [myView layoutIfNeeded];
}];

but during these animations, if I draw the circle view using a layer with a cornerRadius, it goes funny shapes. I can’t pass the animation duration in to layoutSubviews so I need to add the right animation within -[setBounds].

Answer 1

With many thanks to David, this is the solution I found. In the end what turned out to be the key to it was using the view’s -[actionForLayer:forKey:] method, since that’s used inside UIView blocks instead of whatever the layer’s -[actionForKey] returns.

@implementation SGBRoundView

-(CGFloat)radiusForBounds:(CGRect)bounds
{
    return fminf(bounds.size.width, bounds.size.height) / 2;
}

- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame
{
    self = [super initWithFrame:frame];
    if (self) {
        self.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
        self.opaque = NO;
        self.layer.backgroundColor = [[UIColor purpleColor] CGColor];
        self.layer.borderColor = [[UIColor greenColor] CGColor];
        self.layer.borderWidth = 3;
        self.layer.cornerRadius = [self radiusForBounds:self.bounds];
    }
    return self;
}

-(void)setBounds:(CGRect)bounds
{
    self.layer.cornerRadius = [self radiusForBounds:bounds];
    [super setBounds:bounds];
}

-(id<CAAction>)actionForLayer:(CALayer *)layer forKey:(NSString *)event
{
    id<CAAction> action = [super actionForLayer:layer forKey:event];

    if ([event isEqualToString:@"cornerRadius"])
    {
        CABasicAnimation *boundsAction = (CABasicAnimation *)[self actionForLayer:layer forKey:@"bounds"];
            if ([boundsAction isKindOfClass:[CABasicAnimation class]] && [boundsAction.fromValue isKindOfClass:[NSValue class]])
        {            
            CABasicAnimation *cornerRadiusAction = [CABasicAnimation animationWithKeyPath:@"cornerRadius"];
            cornerRadiusAction.delegate = boundsAction.delegate;
            cornerRadiusAction.duration = boundsAction.duration;
            cornerRadiusAction.fillMode = boundsAction.fillMode;
            cornerRadiusAction.timingFunction = boundsAction.timingFunction;

            CGRect fromBounds = [(NSValue *)boundsAction.fromValue CGRectValue];
            CGFloat fromRadius = [self radiusForBounds:fromBounds];
            cornerRadiusAction.fromValue = [NSNumber numberWithFloat:fromRadius];

            return cornerRadiusAction;
        }
    }

    return action;
}

@end

By using the action that the view provides for the bounds, I was able to get the right duration, fill mode and timing function, and most importantly delegate – without that, the completion block of UIView animations didn’t run.

The radius animation follows that of the bounds in almost all circumstances – there are a few edge cases that I’m trying to iron out, but it’s basically there. It’s also worth mentioning that the pinch gestures are still sometimes jerky – I guess even the accelerated drawing is still costly.