Question

I’m trying to swop the action for a leftBarButtonItem

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{

    UIBarButtonItem *theButton = self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem;

    // 'UIBarButtonItem' may not respond to 'removeTarget:action:forControlEvents:'
    [theButton removeTarget:self action:@selector(revealToggle:)          forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];

    // 'UIBarButtonItem' may not respond to 'removeTarget:action:forControlEvents:'
    [theButton addTarget:self    action:@selector(closeToggle:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];

    // BUT THIS DOES WORK
    [theButton.target performSelector:theButton.action];

}

According to what I’ve read it should work – what am I doing wrong?

Actually this is a work around to something more complicated that I don’t understand.

I want to send a message from the current UIViewController that’s within the UINavigation Controller.

The UINavigationController has this button

    self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"btnmenu.png"] style:UIBarButtonItemStylePlain target:self.navigationController.parentViewController action:@selector(revealToggle:)];

which works fine. What I really what to do is

[self.navigationController.parentViewController closeToggle];

from within the didSelectRowAtIndexPath function, which fails, but I managed to achieve the same effect with [theButton.target performSelector:theButton.action]

Answer 1

As I said in the comment, UIBarButtonItem does not inherit UIControl methods, thus your warnings for addTarget and removeTarget. Instead what you do is directly assign a new UIBarButtonItem:

self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"btnmenu.png"] style:UIBarButtonItemStylePlain
                     target:self.navigationController.parentViewController action:@selector(clearToggle)];

Also, notice the difference in your defined selector for the targeted UIBarButtonItem closeToggle: . But what you said you want to do is send a message to the parent controller of, closeToggle. The colon there is quite different as one expects a parameter. Performing an action on closeToggle: if your method is closeToggle will result in a crash, and vice versa.

-(void)closeToggle:(id)sender // your UIBarButtonItem action.
-(void)closeToggle            // which is, [self.navigationController.parentViewController closeToggle];

Decide what method it is you want and follow the above signing of a new UIBarButtonItem.

Hope this helps.