Question

I’m trying to drag an image and let it return to it’s original position after releasing it. So far, I can drag an image by creating it as a button using the following code: (as seen in the answer to this question: Basic Drag and Drop in iOS )

UIButton *button = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];
[button addTarget:self action:@selector(imageTouch:withEvent:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchDown];
[button addTarget:self action:@selector(imageMoved:withEvent:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchDragInside];
[button setImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"vehicle.png"] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
[self.view addSubview:button];

And later I define:

- (IBAction) imageMoved:(id) sender withEvent:(UIEvent *) event
{
    CGPoint point = [[[event allTouches] anyObject] locationInView:self.view];
    UIControl *control = sender;
    control.center = point;
}

How can I make it return to it’s original position after releasing it ?, for starters I will save the position at which each image is supposed to return, but then, there is anyway to indicate an UIImage to go from it’s current position and move to another one ?, or any other alterative solution ?

Answer 1

You know what, I was just working on this yesterday, so here you go with a little bonus animation:

- (void)previewImageTouchUpInside:(UIButton*)aButton {
    if (!previewImageDragged) {
        [self selectPreviewImage:aButton];
        return;
}

    previewImageDragged = NO;

    // If user drag photo a little and then release, we'll still treat it as a tap
    //  instead of drag
    if ((originalPositionOfButton.x - aButton.center.x) * 
      (originalPositionOfButton.x - aButton.center.x) + 
      (originalPositionOfButton.y - aButton.center.y) * 
      (originalPositionOfButton.y - aButton.center.y) < 10) {
        aButton.center = originalPositionOfButton;
        [self selectPreviewImage:aButton];
        return;
    }

    [UIView animateWithDuration:0.5
        delay:0
        options:UIViewAnimationOptionCurveEaseOut |
        UIViewAnimationOptionAllowUserInteraction animations:^{
        aButton.center = originalPositionOfButton;
    } completion:nil];
}



- (void)previewImageDraggedInside:(UIButton*)aButton event:(UIEvent*)event {
    if (!previewImageDragged) {
        originalPositionOfButton = aButton.center;
        [self.view bringSubviewToFront:aButton];
        [self.view bringSubviewToFront:[self.view viewWithTag:CHOOSE_PHOTO_BUTTON_TAG]];
    }

    UITouch* touch = [[event allTouches] anyObject];

    previewImageDragged = YES;
    aButton.center = CGPointMake(aButton.center.x+[touch locationInView:self.view].x-
        [touch previousLocationInView:self.view].x, 
        aButton.center.y+[touch locationInView:self.view].y-
        [touch previousLocationInView:self.view].y);
}

It still has a few magic numbers and I haven’t renamed the functions and variables to suit your example, but it should be clear. I also did the indentation here since I don’t manually break long lines in my code.